Hesher

I knew I made a wise choice in viewing material the second my DVD player loaded the main menu to Hesher.  The icon that indicates your selection is a crudely drawn fist giving the middle finger.  Nice!  Even better, the bonus scenes are called "Extra Shit."  Some films have to fight for my affection, while others have me at "Extra Shit."  Hesher, I loved you before I even pressed play.

Hesher is, shockingly, not about a character named Hesher.  It is about TJ (Devin Brochu), a tween whose mother recently died.  TJ is taking the loss hard, naturally, but he's expressing his grief through an odd attachment to the wrecked car she died in; he repeatedly bothers the junkyard owner and acts out when he doesn't sell TJ the car (that he has no money for, or a license, or insurance, or a way to fix it, etc., etc.).  Making things worse, the kid who works at the junkyard is also TJ's bully at school.  He would turn to his father for advice, but Paul (Rainn Wilson) has been popping pills for months, trying to avoid feeling anything.

"When does this movie get METAL?" Be patient.

That's when we meet Hesher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt).  Hesher isn't related to TJ, he's not a family friend, and he's neither famous or infamous in their town.  Heck, we never even learn if "Hesher" is a first name, last name or nickname.  Hesher is just Hesher.  And that's how he shows up.  He was squatting in a house that was under construction when TJ accidentally blew his cover, so Hesher decides to give TJ his full attention.

This isn't the scene where Hesher threatens to skullfuck TJ.  But rest assured, it is in the movie.

Hesher shows up in TJ's school.  He follows him to the grocery store.  He even moves into TJ's house with no explanation to Paul or TJ's Grandma (Piper Laurie).  He's just Hesher, and if he wants to live in Paul's garage and hang out in his underwear, what the hell are you going to do about it?

A: drop trou and enjoy some stolen cable, courtesy of Hesher

There's more to the plot of Hesher than that, but not a lot more.  The destination is not the best part of this film's story --- this is about the journey.  Joseph Gordon-Levitt is priceless in the title role.  Since JGL doesn't tend to play bad-asses, I was surprised at how convincing he was.  Maybe it was the awesome headbanging hair, or the scuzzy beard, or the first-class crazy eyes, or his fantastic tattoos (a cartoon fist flipping the middle finger across his back and a stick figure blowing his brains out across his torso) --- whatever it was, this character was completely awesome.  It helps that the character is eminently quotable; one of my favorites is "Humans been pokin' vagina for hundreds of years.  Longer, probably."  Gordon-Levitt does a good job playing quiet characters, so it might surprise you how great he is as a completely over-the-top and impossible extrapolation of that one guy in high school who really really really loved his heavy metal.  Actually...yeah...Hesher is the personification of what high school kids think is cool and dangerous.  And JGL is convincing as a scary dude, too!  Who'd a thunk it?

Another lesson learned: fire makes everything more bad-ass

Devin Brochu is okay as TJ, but it's a tough role to be totally likable in.  He's a teenager misdirecting his anger from a massive emotional trauma --- of course he's going to be whiny.  Brochu does do a good job acting as a proxy for the audience, looking suitably surprised/horrified by nearly everything Hesher chooses to do.  Rainn Wilson wasn't in a whole lot of the movie and he was not funny at all.  He was pretty fantastic, though.  It was a very subtle performance, but Wilson was excellent as a depressed father trying to move on with his life; I don't really like Wilson normally, so consider that praise well-earned.  Natalie Portman has a more substantial role as a grown woman who somehow winds up befriending TJ and becoming a love interest, of sorts.  Unfortunately, she suffered from "ugly pretty girl" syndrome, where she was given big glasses and baggy clothes to make her look nerdy and ugly.

Look at her.  I just want to vomit in her face, she's so gross!

Aside from that bit of cliche, I thought Portman did a fine job.  Piper Laurie was also good as Grandma, especially with her interactions with Hesher.  There aren't many films that show the elderly treating younger, threatening-looking folks with complete acceptance, and I thought that was an unexpected small twist.

Hesher is the first full-length theatrical work by writer/director Spencer Susser, and I think it shows.  There are a lot of things that Susser does right in this movie.  The main characters are all interesting, and their interactions feel natural even when they're doing ridiculous shit.  I was genuinely impressed with how well depression was exhibited by the characters, without being the full focus of the movie.  And, of course, I liked how high-school-awesome Hesher was.  The soundtrack (comprised entirely of Metallica and Motörhead, I believe) was also pretty great.

You know what else is great?  Markers.

Having said all that, I have to admit that this story never really gels.  The characters are individually good, but the parts never come together to form a greater whole.  Specifically, it never makes sense why TJ's family would just accept Hesher living in their house, and it never makes sense why Hesher chose to live with them.  The characters are just not woven together; this movie could have ended at almost any time and had only a marginally smaller impact on the story as a whole.  That's (obviously) the biggest problem I have with Hesher, but there are some missed opportunities as well.  The use of film style in this movie is inconsistent and, therefore, ineffective.  In the first few scenes that Hesher is in, it is questionable whether or not he is a real character, or if he is a suburban heavy metal Tyler Durden.  It turns out that he is not.  There is also an audio feedback noise that happens when somebody is going to do something crazy --- and I liked that effect --- but it lost its significance when it was also used just before Hesher got philosophical.  Hesher's inspirational speech toward the end could have been terrible, but Susser was smart enough to steer it away from genuine sentiment and back to weird and funny.

Also smart: not using tie-dye and coffee stain-halos in the main promo posters

Hesher is not a great movie, and its shortcomings in the story department are pretty obvious.  I really liked it, though.  There was enough to make this enjoyable despite its flaws, and those moments came from various sources.  I liked that there is no definitive time or place for this story; those license plates might look like California plates, but they just say "Drive Safely."  That's clever.  And there are so many chunks of dialogue that are random and abrasive, yet still very funny --- Hesher's rants about Grandma rape and orgies were stellar --- that I can't help but walk away with a positive impression.

Admittedly, it helps if you've ever looked at someone like this

Maybe the key to this film is that it is presented as a drama and it has dramatic parts...and then, over to the side, is Hesher, doing Hesher knows what.  If this was supposed to be a comedy, it would certainly be a strange one.  If you take this as a drama, though, it's not bad at all --- and it has occasional doses of awesomeness in small bursts.

Monsters vs. Aliens

I think the "versus" movie is a fantastic idea. When you explain exactly what the movie is about in the title, you don't have to waste unnecessary time developing characters or plot, and can just get on with the fight.  Freddy vs. Jason is, obviously, the best example of this, but there are a lot of good vs. match-ups out there.  Ninjas vs Pirates: The Movie, anyone?  Yes please!

Monsters vs. Aliens, for some unknown reason, chooses not to embrace its title and instead tries to tell a story.  Big mistake.  Instead of watching animated monsters fighting animated aliens, probably ripping their innards out and using them for jump rope, viewers are treated to the girl-power tale of Susan (voiced by Reese Witherspoon), as she learns (SPOILER!!!) that happiness does not come from living for others.  Susan, later dubbed Ginormica, is the submissive fiancee of local weatherman and swollen ego, Derek (Paul Rudd), until she is struck by a meteor on their wedding day. 

On a side note, I'd just like to say that, if you find a large object falling toward you, DO NOT turn around and run away.  You're still in the line of impact, and you might not have the best depth perception; instead, run perpendicular to the object's path and you will hopefully avoid any meteors heading your way.  You're welcome. 

Anyway, Susan became radioactive and turned into a giant.  Once again, movies prove science wrong by showing how a horrible accident inevitably leads to super powers.  Take that, science!  Susan is quickly subdued by the military and taken to a military complex that houses other monsters.  The other monsters are an amorphous blob, B.O.B. (Seth Rogen), a mad scientist with a cockroach's head and abilities, Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), a half-ape and half-amphibian evolutionary wonder, the Missing Link (Will Arnett), and a Chrysler Building-sized grub, Insectosaurus.  Susan is renamed Ginormica by the monsters' military liason, the R. Lee Ermy-esque General W.R. Monger (Keifer Sutherland) and is told that she is now a monster.  See, it's funny because she looks like a normal woman (albeit 100 feet tall) and they're calling her a monster.  Get it?  Well, the kids will.  Susan has a hard time accepting her new role, especially when she is told that monsters never leave their secret military complex.  Frowny face emoticon!  Things change quickly when the alien Gallaxhar (Rainn Wilson) shows up to conquer the planet.  Well, that's just his secondary goal.  What Gallaxhar really wants is the radiation that Susan has absorbed; this will return her to normal, but will give him ultimate power.  Obviously, this leads to the monsters being released to fight the alien menace; through the power of fist-fighting, Susan learns the value of self-esteem and true friends.

This movie is co-directed by Conrad Vernon (Shrek 2) and Rob Letterman (Shark Tale), and you can identify elements of their previous work here.  My major problem with Dreamworks Animation's films is their lack of depth.  Sure, they're nice, light movies for little kids, but I like cartoons, too, man!  With Pixar making such amazing movies every year, Dreamworks' stuff often pales in comparison.  Here, we get a movie whose moral is basically that girls should have their own identity and not just be accessories to successful men.  Whoa...edgy!  This soft-sell of a tale is reminiscent of Letterman's Shark Tale' and its "lying is bad" moral.  On the bright side, Conrad Vernon's presence is felt, too.  One of the main reasons Shrek 2 is my favorite Shrek is because it is not afraid to just go for jokes.  Here, both Hugh Laurie and Seth Rogen are both used very well; neither really adds much to the plot, but both are decently funny whenever they get the chance (and I hate Rogen, so that's a huge compliment).  I think these joke characters (Insectosaurus is another) are really what work best in this movie.  It's just too bad they are sprinkled through a competent, but uninspired, main plot.

The animation in this movie is as good as you would expect.  While I have my own issues with Dreamworks Animation's stories, their movies always look great.  This movie was the first computer animated movie made in the new stereoscopic 3-D, but I just saw the 2-D version and it still looked good.

The voice acting is star-studded, but a little hit-and-miss.  Reese Witherspoon may or may not be a good choice as the main character; due to the story's strengths and weaknesses, she doesn't really get an opportunity to excel.  Hugh Laurie and Kiefer Sutherland might have been playing stock characters, but they did a great job diving into their roles; it is difficult to identify them in this film.  Seth Rogen and Rainn Wilson clearly had the most fun making this movie, and it shows.  It helps that their characters are both idiots, since that doesn't stretch their acting too far from their comfort zones.  Stephen Colbert was an inspired choice to play the President of the United States, but I was a little underwhelmed by the lines given to him; there's even a couple of minutes early on where his character is on screen, but has no dialogue.  What a waste!  The rest of the cast failed to impress me.  I didn't care for Will Arnett, as the Missing Link, in particular, but Paul Rudd, Amy Pohler, Julie White, Jeffrey Tambor, Ed Helms, Renee Zellweger, and John Krasinski all made brief and unmemorable appearances in the film.

I guess the bottom line here is how likable the movie is.  Kids will absolutely enjoy the movie.  B.O.B. plays for cheap laughs and his humor is aimed at the kids.  Adults will like some of the humor, sure (my favorite was Insectosaurus), but the story is saccharine enough to cause cavities.  There are certainly worse children's movies to watch, but I don't think this one has the all-ages appeal to make it a classic.