Gym Teacher: The Movie: Often while I'm reading a review of a movie online, I open up a new tab and put the film on our Netflix queue, then I tend to forget about the movie until it shows up in my mailbox. Hence, constant surprise at what's next from Netflix. I have no clue what made me put this on our list. The title seems to promise a Will Farrell/Ben Stiller type of monstrosity, and since I hate those movies (Anchorman, Volleyball), I can't imagine why I had ordered this one up.It turns out to be a Nickelodeon made-(for teens)-TV movie with Christopher Meloni as a former Olympic gymnast who disgraced himself by running crotch-first into the pommel horse on live TV. Years later, he's a well-liked gym teacher still trying to live down his past. When a national gym teacher competition is announced, his principal (Amy Sedaris) and his students encourage him to give it a shot. The catch is that his entire class must participate, including the new kid (Nathan Kress), a shy little nerd whose mom makes him wear a helmet in gym so he won't hurt himself (his father was killed during a 3-legged race). Of course, as this is a sweet-natured inspirational family movie, Meloni overcomes his demons, gets Kress to take off his helmet, and wins the trophy. There are occasional touches of quirky humor that make this worth sitting through, though the groove the film settles into is too predictable. Meloni is excellent at creating his character, a twitchy but friendly guy who seems to be constantly thinking too hard about his next move or look or sentence. Even better is Amy Sedaris as the tightly-wound principal who has a thing for Meloni, but sadly her character vanishes from the film in the last half. David Alan Grier is wasted as a rival coach. I wasn't sorry to have seen this, but I still wonder what the hell I read that made me think I'd want to see this.
Alexander: I was on a Colin Farrell kick recently and decided against my better judgment to watch this. It's pretty terrible, though I can't quite put my finger on exactly why. As Alexander, Farrell is OK but never seems very commanding, and the goofy blond hairdo never stops looking goofy. Of course, my dear Angelina Jolie can do no wrong, and as Alexander's hot, ambitious mom (and, it's implied, almost lover), she is fabulous; even if she comes off as a bit campy, she injects some much needed passion and clarity of focus in this windy, rambling epic. It feels very much like one of those big expensive epics from the 50's and 60's, nice-looking but poorly scripted and empty. There are 3 different cuts of the movie, ranging from 167 to 207 minutes, but what it needs is to be sliced down to a lean and mean 90 minutes.
Doubt: We saw this on Broadway with Cherry Jones and Brian F. O'Byrne who both gave fantastic performances. Unfortunately, Hollywood never learns its lesson and had to go for bigger names for the movie version. I guess I can't really be fair to the movie since I was always comparing it to the play, and the play was always winning. Meryl Streep is a nun and principal of a Catholic school in the early 60's who suspects that Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) is abusing one of his students, the first African-American to enroll in the school. With no proof except an odd incident witnessed by another teacher (Amy Adams), Streep goes after Hoffman, vowing to get him removed from the classroom. She wins, but not quite in the way she wanted. As the title hints, the movie (and play) never gives us the final word on whether or not the priest is guilty, and that is the genius of the script. Streep and Hoffman are fine, but both have very different takes on their characters--O'Byrne was much more sturdy and likeable, Jones was a bit harder than Streep. Ultimately, the film opens up the play a bit, but not so it ruins it. It's an interesting movie, but different and a bit lesser than the play.
3 comments:
I'm one of the few who wasn't impressed by DOUBT on Broadway, and had no intention of sitting through Philip Seymour Hoffman in the role of the Accused Priest. I mean, come on. Who would doubt that Hoffman is a child molester? The whole premise is kind of negated simply by casting.
I have to say that any chance of my going to see _Doubt_ in the theatre was quashed by the awful trailers, which made it look like *everyone* was chewing--nay, gorging--on the scenery. I figured that would be OK if they were actually going for campiness, but that didn't seem to be the case.
Is the actual film as horribly overacted as the trailers implied? Your description makes it seem less horrifying than the ads did!
Roscoe: Surprisingly, I don't think Hoffman comes off that way. He's about as clean-cut and average has he's likely to get. O'Byrne on stage actually came a bit more suspect that Hoffman does.
Rosemary: Again somewhat surprisingly, the overacting isn't as bad as it looked in the trailers. I only felt it become a problem toward the end with Hoffman and Streep go at it mano a mano, so to speak. Hoffman starts shouting, though it comes off like bad acting rather than camp. Streep doesn't nail the last moment like Cherry Jones did on stage. But it's not a terrible movie.
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