Live action/special effects comedy. Starring Freddie Prinze Jr., Sarah
Michelle Gellar, Matthew Lillard, Linda Cardellini and Rowan Atkinson.
Directed by Raja Gosnell. Written by James Gunn. (PG. 87 minutes. At Bay Area
theaters.)
Two schools of thought will undoubtedly emerge about the big-screen version
of “Scooby-Doo”: Those who say it’s a logical extension of the televised
cartoon show that has captivated kids since 1969 and those who say it’s the
latest sign of Hollywood’s desperation to mine popular cartoon characters for
cinematic profit.
The first camp will see “Scooby-Doo” as a fun, innocuous way to spend 87
minutes, while the other camp will say it’s a sappy, formulaic vehicle that
exists to spawn sequels and merchandise. In which camp is this reviewer? For
now, let’s just say this: If you focus solely on the film’s acting, you come
away somewhat satisfied that Matthew Lillard (who plays the Shaggy beatnik
character), Freddie Prinze Jr. (the vain, spoiled Fred), Sarah Michelle Gellar
(cast as the beautiful Daphne) and Linda Cardellini (the brainy Velma) did the
best they could with their parts.
The plot? That has the mystery-solving team of Shaggy, Fred, Daphne, Velma
and their large, talking, animated dog, Scooby-Doo, flying to Spooky Island,
where a mysterious man named Emile Mondavarious (Rowan Atkinson) runs an
amusement park for college-age students on spring break. Lately, the students
have been undergoing odd transformations at Spooky Island, arriving as typical
thrill-seekers but leaving as stiff, brain-locked automatons. Who’s sabotaging
the theme park? That’s the question for the private investigating quintet.
The premise behind “Scooby-Doo” lets an animated dog and his best friends
roam around a tropical hideaway, enter strange buildings and — if they can
avoid getting hurt — unveil the secret behind all the monstrous mayhem.
For families with children, “Scooby-Doo” might be a fine way to while away
some time. For adults still hooked on the “Scooby-Doo” series (I hope that’s
not a sizable group), this film will also be fun. Others contemplating “Scooby-
Doo” will have to ask themselves this: Do you really want to spend money
watching what is essentially marginality, or would those dollars be better
used to see a better film or even buy a good book?
Advisory: This film contains some violence.
– Jonathan Curiel
‘LATE MARRIAGE’
Drama. Directed and written by Dover Kosashvili. (Not rated. 100 minutes.
In Georgian and Hebrew with English subtitles. At the UA Galaxy, Rafael Film
Center in San Rafael and Towne 3 in San Jose.)
Don’t expect another “Monsoon Wedding” from this tough-minded film about
arranged marriages between Soviet Georgian immigrants in Israel. Writer-
director Dover Kosashvili is a shrewd observer of cultural collision, and his
film — a stunning directing debut — is anything but sentimental about old-
country customs.
Zaza, played by the charismatic, sleepy-eyed Lio Ashkenazi, is a 31-year-
old graduate student in philosophy who keeps dodging his parents’ matchmaking
efforts. By his estimation, they’ve made 100 attempts to find him a wife: “The
ones I liked didn’t like me,” he shrugs.
Zaza isn’t gay; he’s not even overly picky. The real source of resistance
is his secret relationship with Judith (Ronit Elkabetz), a beautiful Moroccan
divorcee with a 6-year-old daughter. When Zaza’s family discovers the romance,
they converge on Judith’s apartment, humiliate her and threaten her life in
front of her daughter.
The brutal frankness of that scene is matched by a long, earlier episode
when Zaza and Judith have sex. The actors are naked and nothing is held back,
but Kosashvili doesn’t sweeten the moment with dramatic lighting or cunning
camera moves. It feels real, unvarnished, but is no less sexy for those
qualities.
Kosashvili focuses on character dynamics, lets scenes run on for a long
time and rarely moves the camera. “Late Marriage” at first feels flat and
enervated; after a while the pacing, lack of artifice and compelling story
create a kind of hypnotizing pull.
Ashkenazi and Elkabetz are sensational in the lead roles, struggling to
protect their love against the combined force of Zaza’s family. Zaza’s mother,
cold and invincible, is played by Lili Kosashvili, the director’s mother.
Advisory: This film contains nudity, sexual situations and rough language.
– Edward Guthmann
‘THE SLEEPY TIME GAL’
Drama. Starring Jacqueline Bisset, Martha Plimpton and Nick Stahl. Directed
by Christopher Munch. (Not rated. 94 minutes. At the Roxie Cinema.)
“The Sleepy Time Gal” is a smooth, elegiac mood piece about a free-spirited
woman who is hit with a terminal illness while in her prime. As part of her
coming to terms with her stormy life, she searches for the daughter whom she
gave up for adoption years before — even as her biological daughter embarks
on a search for her.
Directed by Christopher Munch, the film is semiautobiographical, based on
the story of the director’s mother. It’s at times moving and at other times
slow, but what makes the film compelling is the mood it instills in the
audience, a mood very much like the melancholy and disorienting cloud that
comes over us when a loved one is seriously ill.
Jacqueline Bisset plays the mother, Frances, a woman with a colorful past
as a jazz disc jockey in her youth and as a social activist, freelance writer
and history buff in her later years. Along the way, there were the men, who
fell in love with her, had their heads handed to them and spent the rest of
their lives growing old and daydreaming.
Bisset, of course, makes it easy to believe in Frances’ allure, but she
also brings a quality of wisdom and sadness, an unsentimental acceptance of
the fact that a single life, even one lived to the fullest, just isn’t enough.
The camera is right on Bisset for much of the movie, much of it filmed in
close-up, revealing a performance of truth and depth.
For Martha Plimpton, as the daughter — a corporate lawyer suddenly seized
by a need to know her birth parents — the movie provides a chance to break
out of the satiric comic roles for which she has been noted and to dive into
something emotional. She succeeds.
“The Sleepy Time Gal” is sneaky in the best way. Its rhythms and currents
sink into a viewer’s consciousness and linger in the mind.
Advisory: This film contains mildly strong language.
– Mick LaSalle
‘THE BELIEVER’
Drama. Starring Ryan Gosling. Directed and written by Henry Bean. (R. 100
minutes. At the Lumiere.)
When “The Believer” couldn’t find a distributor after winning the 2001
Sundance Grand Jury Prize, cries of cowardice emerged. Studios were simply too
afraid of the film about a young Jewish man turned neo-Nazi, the argument went.
Blessed with a searing lead performance by Ryan Gosling (”Murder by
Numbers”), the movie is powerful and provocative. It’s also built on a faulty
premise, one it follows into melodrama and silliness. Maybe those aspects put
studios e off — that is, until Showtime aired the movie and a small
distributor agreed to release it.
Writer and director Henry Bean’s concept — that a brilliant yeshiva
student is so tortured by religious questions that he turns on his own people -
- is initially intriguing, if counterintuitive. Watching Gosling’s conflicted,
rage-filled face as he terrorizes a helpless Jewish kid, you almost buy it.
Almost. Bean never establishes what made such a bright kid into a monster.
Having to associate with thickheaded racist cronies would drive a smart guy up
the wall. But the character is supposed to be rejecting an oppressive God and
what he sees as Jews’ inaction in the face of brutality. Wouldn’t he turn his
rage toward God or toward the Jews’ oppressors, then?
The movie’s shift into an implausible thriller magnifies its lack of
character development. But Gosling gives an impassioned performance throughout.
The skinny former Mousketeer carries himself with such self-assured menace
that he becomes imposing. You believe it when his character beats the stuffing
out of a muscle-bound rival skinhead.
The most maddening aspect of the film is how a single scene can be dumb and
profound at the same time. When the racist skinheads are sent to “sensitivity
training” at a Holocaust survivors’ group, the setup strains credibility but
then delivers the picture’s most emotionally satisfying moment.
After Gosling’s arrogant know-it-all condemns a man for failing to pummel
the Nazis who killed his son, a woman responds, “Here in this rich, safe,
stupid country, it’s easy to imagine one’s self a hero.” Exactly, just as it’s
easy to make a controversial movie without saying enough.
Advisory: This film contains violence, sexual scenes, rampant ethnic and
religious slurs.
– Carla Meyer
‘LES DESTINEES’
Drama. Starring Emmanuelle Beart, Charles Berling and Isabelle Huppert.
Directed by Oliver Assayas. (Not rated. 180 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.)
Whenever I reflect ruefully on how quickly time passes, I’m reassured by
movies like “Les Destinees,” which can take three hours and stretch them into
something that feels like 10 days in a sweatbox.
The movie suffers from two fatal ailments — a dearth of vitality and a
story that’s shapeless and uninflected. An adaptation of a French novel, “Les
Destinees Sentimentale,” it spans the first 30 years of the 20th century as it
follows Jean, a spiritually restless fellow who gets dragged into the family
porcelain business. Jean, who’s played by Charles Berling, starts off passive
and gloomy, and he ends up that way. Three hours of this guy.
Jean’s story is hardly interesting or emblematic enough to be worthy of a
feature-length movie, much less the epic treatment. Fortunately, his women
have more life to them. Isabelle Huppert is Jean’s estranged first wife, a
woman of remote demeanor and suppressed rage. And Emmanuelle Beart is wife No.
2, with whom Jean makes an idyllic life in Switzerland, only to risk blowing
it with his indifference. Huppert and Beart are two of the best actresses in
Europe, but they can’t save this movie.
Pockets of life are rare but worth savoring. Director Olivier Assayas may
have trouble shaping scenes, but he does take us through the porcelain-making
process, showing us the workings of a turn-of-the-century factory, from the
pottery making to the hand-painting to the glazing.
Best of all is the ballroom scene, which comes early. In every other
ballroom scene in movies, the sound is amplified, glorious and overpowering.
Here the music is quiet enough that we can hear the rustle of clothing and the
feet on the ballroom floor. The scene is not nearly as romantic as what we’ve
come to expect, but it’s more human.
Still, if given a choice of whether to sit through “Les Destinees,” take
the sweatbox.
Advisory: This film contains sexual situations.
– Mck LaSalle
