Go

What is she doing?  Tossing a business card?

What is the 1990s worst contribution to popular culture?  Hammer pants?  R and B hooks in rap songs?  Nu-metal?  My vote goes to rave kids.  Don't be confused: I'm perfectly okay with raves, because I can choose to stay away from them and their drug- and sex-fueled semi-mobile dance parties; raves are kind of like the gypsies of the party scene, squatting wherever they can for the weekend and then skipping to a new home next week.  No, I hate rave kids.  Ugh.  Hands swirling, glo-stick wearing, pacifier-sucking, pill-popping, candy necklaces --- I hate everything superficial about them.  Oh, and dude, I don't care if cotton feels AMAZING when you're rolling on ecstasy, stop licking my shirt.  Surprisingly, the first movie I ever saw about the rave scene was the totally awesome Human Traffic (watch the UK version, if you can find it).  So, when a reader requested that I review Go, another rave-themed film, I watched with cautious optimism.

At it's core, Go is a film about a drug deal gone bad.  And, um, a fairly unconnected trip to Vegas, probably because director Doug Liman was coming off of Swingers.  The story is split into three parts (Ronna's Story, Simon's Story, and Adam & Zack's Story) with an integrated ending. It all revolves around Ronna's (Sarah Polley) misadventures filling in as a drug dealer when her local dealer, Simon (Desmond Askew), leaves for Las Vegas on short notice.  Ronna is in desperate need of cash to avoid eviction, and her joe job at the supermarket isn't going to cut it by tomorrow.  Thankfully, fate intervenes when two dudes, Adam (Scott Wolf) and Zack (Jay Mohr), ask her for some ecstasy.  How does she get it?  She goes to her dealer's supplier, Todd (Timothy Olyphant).  Oh, wait...remember how she doesn't have much money?  It turns out that drugs cost money.  Who knew?  Ronna gives Todd what she has and leaves her friend, Claire (Katie Holmes) behind as collateral.  That's okay, though, because Ronna will make some quick cash off of Adam and Zack, and be right back!  Unless they're part of a police drug bust operation, that is.  Ronna is faced with a tough decision.  Does she make the sale and risk going to jail, or should she dump the drugs?  One way is risky, but could make money.  The other is safer, but would leave her without any cash for rent, cash to free Claire, or drugs to sell back to Todd/sell to other people.  Meanwhile, Simon is in Vegas with his buddies and manages to get involved with (in this order):

• explosive diarrhea
• gambling
• three-way tantric sex
• a stolen car
• a stolen gun
• private strip club dance
• a 1970s-style car chase

It sounds like a pretty sweet first trip to Vegas, right?  That's why I couldn't elope to Vegas for my wedding.  Even more meanwhile, Adam and Zack's story tells how these two nice guys could end up being sneaky undercover drug agents, trying to arrest innocent Ronna's all over town.  The short answer is because they love drugs, too.  In the end, all three plots come together with a nice, neat bow on top, and everything is right with the world.  The end.

Man, this movie has a lot of noteworthy actors.  Having Sarah Polley (who is decent enough) as the lead doesn't usually indicate that, but there were a lot of young up-and-kind-of-maybe-comers in this film.  Katie Holmes and her crooked smile make a small appearance.  It's not great work, but I'm not going to pick on someone who presumably has a heart condition.  Seriously, did she have a stroke, or did someone just melt the side of her face?  That broken smile bugs me.  Timothy Olyphant was actually pretty decent, even though it looked like he was doing his best Billy Idol impression throughout.  Desmond Askew is the most likable character in the whole movie, perhaps because his story is the most fun.  Regardless, he overcomes some eye-roll-worthy dialogue early in the film to be the best bit.  Taye Diggs does a pretty solid job as Simon's not-moronic friend; James Duval and Brekin Meyer spent most of their screen time suffering from diarrhea, which is good because Duval is always awful and Meyer's character was a skinny white boy who pretended to be ghetto.  The movie would have been better if those two had died violent deaths, but this isn't a perfect film.  Jay Mohr and Scott Wolf are about as good as you might expect, with both having definite television-actor-level talent and Mohr's amazing ability to seem smug, even when his character tries to be earnest.  I liked to see William Fichtner and Jane Krakowski pop up in this movie; sadly, their parts were poorly written and used mostly for shock value.  Their characters were built up to be one thing, but the joke is that they are something else, completely unrelated to the first thing!  Get it?  It's called wasted script pages, kids.  They're bad.  All in all, the acting is serviceable, with Askew and Olyphant being the stand outs and Meyer and Duval being the fungus in this film's proverbial toilet bowl.

Director Doug Liman does a good job keeping this movie moving, and the pace is probably the best part of this film.  You can argue that the fractured storytelling, quick dialogue, and crime story show that Go stole its style from Pulp Fiction, but left all the drama and compelling characters behind.  And you would be correct.  Still, this movie tries to be clever and the frenetic pace makes most of the plot holes --- if Ronna is seventeen, why does she have her own apartment? --- unnoticeable.  Unfortunately, some of the cuts and edits in this film seem to serve no purpose.  Why do we start the film with Claire talking to Todd the next morning?  Why those two characters?  They are neither the primary plot, nor a linchpin that tied everything together, so it feels like it's just thrown in to make the movie seem mysterious, like they wanted audiences to whisper, "Oh, boy, did you catch all that?  Something must have happened last night for these characters!"  Some of the dialogue is good, some of it is sophomoric, but I will give screenwriter (and frequent Tim Burton collaborator) John August credit for writing a movie meant to be hep with the young folks and have it not feel completely outdated ten years later.  It's nowhere near as great of a script as this movie thinks it is, but it tries.

This really is a busy movie.  It has the attention span of a kid on a sugar rush (or a teen rolling on ecstasy), and a lot happens.  Some of it is dumb.  Why would anyone trust random grocery store customers that want to buy large quantities of drugs for any reason?  Who rips people off with fake drugs and then stays at that party?  If Todd "gives head before [he] gives favors --- and [he] doesn't give head," then why does Simon have his credit card?  If Simon stole the credit card, then why doesn't that ever come up in the story?  And why don't any of the four guys going to Vegas have their own credit card to hold their hotel room?  On the bright side, there is a psychic cat, which was pretty funny.  Unlike most crime and/or drug movies, this film is relatively consequence-free, which cuts the flakier aspects of the film some slack.  It's kind of like a Snackwell's devil's food cake cookie; you know Go isn't going to blow your mind, but it's fun and not that bad for you, so why not enjoy?

Go was a reader request.  Want me to review something?  Maybe I will.

Independence Day

There are movies, and then there are films.  The difference can be subtle.  Sometimes, all it takes to move from traditional popcorn fodder to artistic statement is a single performance.  Other times, it requires a hefty dose of Jeff Goldblum and exploding the living hell out of America's landmarks.  Roland Emmerich has never directed a subtle movie (aside from Godzilla (1998) of course), so guess which route he took?

Independence Day answers the question of whether humanity is the only intelligent life in the universe.  The answer is "No, and where do you get off calling humanity 'intelligent'?"  So, yes, Elliot, there are aliens, and of course the aliens want to kill us.  Do you blame them?  Look how well we take care of things; America is now surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, and the Gulf of Inkwell.  Actually, this movie takes a much more intimate look at how Earthlings (by which, I of course mean Americans) might handle a hostile alien invasion.  Maybe, if all of America were wusses like Arizona, we would just pass a ridiculous law or two.  Luckily, the other forty-eight states (I'll be dead and buried before I recognize Mizzoura) play for keeps.  When aliens come into our atmosphere and blow all the major cities in the world to hell, that just makes us mad.  Well, it makes us panic and despair first, but after our greatest president gives a speech to a bunch of semi-professional pilots, we are ready to kick butts and mispronounce names.  All we need is a hero and a nerd to lead us to victory.  As far as heroes go, it's hard to top mid-90's Will Smith.  The man has charm, talent, and is fun to watch.  As far as nerds go, Anthony Edwards must have been busy.  Still, Jeff Goldblum is a respectable substitute.  Like many mid-90's movies, it turns out that the cure to everything is computer knowledge, so getting a cable repairman/Mensa member to go into space and launch a computer virus into the alien spaceship network sounds waaaaay too easy.  And it is.  But this isn't a movie that ever tried to be smart, so just be happy it's loud and dumb and never gets pretentious.

Is there more to the movie than that?  Of course there is.  This is a big, blockbuster film, so it has an enormous supporting cast.  In the apolitcal and non-military side of things, we have Judd Hirsch playing the broadest Jewish stereotype I have ever seen outside of Seinfeld.  It works, if only because Hirsch is funny, but damn, he is kind of offensive.  Harvey Fierstein plays an obviously heterosexual man at the cable company and Randy Quaid is a drunk pilot (with something to prove to the aliens) with James Duval as his frustrated son.  Randy is drunk in this movie, which is what I expect from all of his roles, but Duval manages to exude frustration, tenderness, and the slightest hint of acting talent in his supporting role (which is surprising, since he stars in my Most Hated Movie, The Doom Generation).

Interesting side note...I am reasonably sure that Randy Quaid wasn't even cast in this film.  He just showed up, drunk as a Senator, and wouldn't leave.  He had some story about being abducted by aliens, and the filmmakers decided "Why not?"  The rest is history.  "Uh, Brian, if that's the case, why isn't his character named Randy?"  Because he was drunk for a solid week.  He might not respond to the name Russell at first, but it only takes four or five tries to convince him of his new identity.

And then there's Jeff Goldblum as a genius/cable repairman.  He has always had a unique speech cadence, but this is the movie that makes it his calling card.  Like Christopher Walken before him, Goldblum is able to channel awkwardness in such an unexpected way that the rest of the cast simply has to bow down before him. This is also the movie script that took his vocal mannerisms and gave him a script just as ludicrous.  Whenever he has an epiphany, he speaks his train of thought out loud and it is beyond believable.  But that's how this movie works.  It takes a decent idea, makes it overblown to the point of being absolutely terrible, and keeps going until it becomes ironic.  This is the epitome of so-bad-it's-good movie making, and Goldblum's character is the best illustration of this.

The President of the United States is Bill Pullman, with a First Lady (Mary McDonnell) that seems to want him to learn to lie better than he does.  Hmm.  He has a capable adviser and a former wife of Goldblum on his staff, Margaret Colin.  Robert Loggia also serves as a military advisor, as does Adam Baldwin (to a lesser extent), but they basically just grimace and shoot things in the movie.  Will Smith is a fighter pilot with Vivica A. Fox as his stripper girlfriend.  He is buddies with another pilot, Harry Connick, Jr., who is less talented (as a pilot) and used as alien cannon-fodder/don't-ask-don't-tell jokes.  Brent Spiner also makes an appearance as a scientist that is clearly not as intelligent as Goldblum's cable repairman.  How embarrassing.

This is not a smart movie.  It is big, loud, and stupid.  The characters are shallow, the dialogue is full of cliche one-liners ("Now that's what I call a close encounter").  You don't care when somebody dies in the movie; this is basically a disaster flick, so that stuff happens sometimes.  This movie is all about the spectacle.  Want to blow up the White House?  Done.  You want Will Smith to punch out an alien?  No problem.  How about an embattled president giving the best damn speech any president has ever given, where he calls for international cooperation in front of an exclusively American audience?  We can make that happen.

I will give Roland Emmerich credit where it's due --- this is a big movie, filled with big moments.  The fact that those moments are effective (or, at least, cool looking) shows the success of this movie.  Emmerich's other films are just as stupid as this, but they lose momentum by the final act.  The pacing in Independence Day is pretty good, with a nice build-up and then waves of action from there on out.  The acting and script are definitely second to the big dumb stuff, but that's okay.  Sometimes, details like characterization get in the way and force movies to spend less time on blowing up the White House.  And we wouldn't want that, would we?

In a way, the silly things are what makes this such an enjoyable movie for me.  It's easy to go back to the special effects blockbusters of years past and be unimpressed; the effects are dated, the characters are cliche, and the personal style of the cast is questionable, at best.  Independence Day still stands up because it is not so serious.  The fact that the dialogue and plot are bad enough for even dramatic characters to be kind of funny defies the odds and enhances that attitude.  This may be a disaster movie, but it's a fun movie, too.  Is this an artistic film?  God, no.  It is the kind of big, dumb action movie that Hollywood loves to make, but rarely completely succeeds with.  And if that doesn't make you feel patriotic, I don't know what will.