Locked Down

Director: Doug Liman
Starring: Anne Hathaway, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Stephen Merchant, Mindy Kaling, Lucy Boynton, Dulé Hill, Jazmyn Simon, Ben Stiller, Ben Kingsley, Mark Gatiss, Claes Bang, Sam Spruell
Running Time: 118 min.
Rating: R

★★★ (out of ★★★★) 

Advertised as one of the first official pandemic movies, both shot during and incorporating COVID-19 into its plotline, HBO Max's appropriately titled romantic caper, Locked Down, wouldn't appear by defiinition to provide a happy escape from reality given its topic. But you'd be forgiven for not knowing it actually isn't the first to tackle this topic, as the critically reviled Songbird attempted a similar feat some months ago with a sci-fi bent, resulting in a creative disaster that offended nearly everyone who saw it, and even some who didn't. Whether there's such a thing as "too soon" before subjecting viewers to this dramatization, the better question might be whether the pandemic's incorporation into a cinematic plotline has anything constructive to say about either the event or our reaction to it. 

Locked Down does pass that relevancy test, even if it's best described as a light relationship drama, serving to confirm much of what we already knew rather than offering up any revelatory insights. One of those is that quarantine can be more of a stressor for some than others, bringing to the surface a myriad of issues not being directly addressed prior to this catastrophe. For its two main characters, this means endlessly getting on each other's last nerves and wallowing in their failures, both as a couple and individually, until a major opportunity comes along to shake them up. Most of it's handled well, even if you can argue its most exciting section is given the least amount of time and attention. Luckily, the protagonists seem real enough, played by two actors who together and separately are dynamic enough to overcome those faults.

Delivery truck driver Paxton (Chiwetel Ejiofor) and fashion company CEO Linda (Anne Hathaway) are a couple whose relationship collapsed prior to them being locked down in their U.K. home during the pandemic. Forced to continue sharing space together, a depressed and irritable Paxton gets a call from his eccentric boss, Malcolm (Ben Kingsley), asking him to step in and make some high-value deliveries under a false identity due to a shortage of drivers. Sensing the chance to finally move up the ranks and put his life back on track after an assault arrest 10 years earlier derailed him, he reluctantly takes the assignment. 

Embroiled in a work crisis of her own, Linda is tasked by her oblivious superior, Solomon (Ben Stiller) to clear out inventory at a nearby Harrod's department store where she used to work. But upon realizing her schedule intersects with Malcolm's delivery, she knows he won't be able to get past the security checkpoint she set up there. Agreeing to help him get through, they contemplate a plan to steal a £3 million diamond from the Harrod's vault, replacing it with the replica. But before attempting to gain access, they'll need to summon the courage to actually go through with this operation, and somehow manage make a safe exit without getting caught, or strangling each other first. 

After this and outings like 2015's The Intern, it's clear Anne Hathaway always impresses when playing CEO's and other similar Type A corporate personalities. It's an oddly specific skillset, but even trapped within the confines of a single location and planted in front of a screen for virtual meetings for much of the film's running time, it still shines through, with her baring the comedic load of these Zoom-centered scenes. Linda's an excecutive not completely comfortable in her own job or skin, which becomes apparent very early on when given the most unenvious of tasks, made that much more awful by the impersonal technological means by which she has to do it. A nervous wreck before, this meeting takes her over-the-top, drinking and smoking non-stop in hopes she can erase the person staring back at her in the mirror, a self-proclaimed sell-out she no longer recognizes. 

Paxton is wound just as tightly, taking to the street to recite poetry aloud to his locked down neighbors and procuring drugs from his backyard garden. And both he and Linda seem more than happy to virtually share their relationship failures with best friends David (Dulé Hill) and Maria (Jazmyn Simon), who look on in awe at this implosion in the making. Ejiofor, usually known for essaying cool, calm, and in control characters plays Paxton as an unfocused dissheveled mess, but in many ways similar enough to Linda that it's inevitable they'd be on the outs before quarantine even started. And now they're stuck with each other for what could be an indefinite amount of time, having long lost touch with the people they were upon first meeting.  

We know where this is going, as Paxton and Linda will attempt to pull off this heist together because, why not? It's by far the best, if not entirely most logical part of the film, assuming viewers aren't already burnt out by their lengthy monologues, virtual meetings and quarantine bickering by then. Still, it's hard not to be intrigued by the process behind their plan and wish there was even more of the actual heist than we get since Hathaway and Ejiofor are so good in those scenes with their back-and-forth, whether their characters are feuding, or on exactly the same page in working toward a shared goal in the film's last act. 

A filmmaker synonomous with efficiently delivered mainstream action entries like Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Edge of Tomorrow and American Made, this marks somewhat of a departure for director Doug Liman in being smaller-scaled and more character driven than usual. A lot of that feels like a necessity, while also giving off the impression we would have gotten something similar anyway, regardless of the circumstances. It's also not the heist caper it was touted as, which is either a positive or negative depending upon your mindset going in. But with him being so skilled at depicting this admittedly smaller slice of the story, you wonder why he just didn't go ahead and make that movie instead. 

Steven Knight's script seems intent on examining the effects of the pandemic through this couple, the worldwide health crisis providing less of a mere backdrop than the axis around which its entire story revolves. If a really well-off couple breaking the law to get even richer may not seem like the most socially resonant premise on paper, Locked Down is still fine for what it is, elevated greatly by its performances to end up a solid effort, if not necessarily the one we thought we'd get. That may not be an enthusiastic rave, but it succeeds in agreeably passing time that's been in longer supply than unusual. Consider it a measuring stick for forthcoming attempts at addressing the event, many of which will undoubtedly fare both far better and worse than this. 

This is the End

Directors: Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg
Starring: Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Michael Cera, Emma Watson, Rihanna, Mindy Kaling, David Krumholtz, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Aziz Ansari, Kevin Hart, Martin Starr
Running Time: 106 min.

★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

Sometimes it can be freeing for viewers to be given a break from the rigid constraints of what we've come to expect from comedies. To be filled with the feeling that literally anything can happen at anytime and what we're watching isn't dependent on a specific formula that's been tried before. This is the End provides that tantalizing proposition, as a group of talented, likable actors are given the opportunity to just cut loose and poke fun at their own celebrity by playing versions of "themselves." It's a golden idea from the minds of Superbad co-writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, even if it looked more enticing on the page than it ends up being on screen. I kept wondering if maybe these guys setting just a few ground rules would have done the film some good, as it starts out promising until devolving into kind of a mess about midway through.

The admittedly inspired central conceit starts running on fumes after a while, with all the actors in on a joke that wears out it's welcome. And it's a shame because what starts so promisingly eventually amounts to a bunch of actors hanging out on set smoking weed and cursing at each other for almost two hours. What nearly rescues this are all these performers since it can't be overstated how big a fan of theirs I am, only making this disappointment sting just a bit more.

When actor Jay Baruchel arrives in L.A. to meet up with his old friend Seth Rogen, he sees it as an opportunity to get high, eat junk food and play video games. But Rogen has other plans, dragging his unwilling and visibly uncomfortable pal to James Franco's debaucherous housewarming party, which includes celebrity attendees such as Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, Michael Cera, Rihanna, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Emma Watson, Mindy Kaling, Jason Segel, Aziz Ansari, Kevin Hart, David Krumholtz and Martin Starr. But when Baruchel goes out for cigarettes with Rogen, the two discover mass chaos on the streets, with explosions, fire, and a strange blue light shooting pedestrians up into the sky. It isn't long after they return that a massive crack opens in the earth, swallowing most of Franco's famous partygoers while leaving Baruchel, Rogen, Franco, Hill and Robinson hauled up in his house hoarding supplies and waiting for help. Franco also has an uninvited houseguest in Danny McBride, whose belligerent behavior and glutenous consumption of food and drink is making survival extremely difficult. As tempers flare and tensions escalate at the Franco compound, Jay's bold prediction that the biblical Apocalypse is upon them is looking more more believable by the second.

To call a movie like this "self-indulgent" is not only beside the point, but possibly a high compliment. We wouldn't expect anything else from these guys and would worry if they didn't take every opportunity to lampoon their own images with tongues planted firmly in cheek. That's by far the film's strongest aspect and it's made very clear within the opening minutes with Michael Cera's extended cameo a self-absorbed, drug-addicted celebrity man whore who heinous acts include blinding Christopher Mintz-Plasse with cocaine and sexually harassing Rihanna, The movie never quite repeats it's magic once he departs (in the most spectacularly hilarious way possible). All the dirty, filthy comedy with Cera works because it's truly shocking to see him specifically act like a spoiled Hollywood brat and he just throws himself into it with reckless abandon. And of course there's his unbelievably colorful windbreaker, which should really have its own movie.

When they try to repeat much of Cera's over-the-top hijinx with everyone else it doesn't work as well. We completely expect Rogen, Franco, Hill, McBride, and Robinson to do the craziest things possible, but what's most surprising is just how much of a slog the middle portion of the picture is, with the six of men under lockdown in Franco's house hurling insults at each other and doing drugs for almost an hour straight.  While an "end of the world" scenario with these actors should be exciting, the premise actually turns out to be creatively limiting, almost as if Rogen and Goldberg didn't know what to do once the party stopped and they had to switch gears into Apocalyptic action-comedy. There's this nagging feeling that a real-time movie that revolved entirely around this party would probably be superior to much of what follows. 

That's not say this still doesn't have its moments, most of them coming in smaller doses when the actors spoof their own reputations. Franco is the pretentious "artiste," with his living room doubling as a gallery adorned with Freaks and Geeks paintings and a basement containing a Spider-Man 3 cardboard standee and an Harvey Milk sign. And that's not even mentioning what happens with his prized pistol from Flyboys. Really clever. Jonah Hill is re-imagined as disinengenous and strangely effeminate, competing with Baruchel for Rogen's attention. Craig Robinson's "Mr. Robinson" hand towel never leaves his shoulder while Danny McBride is, well, Danny McBride. Or more accurately, he's Kenny Powers. He also appears in an epic breakfast montage sure to make Walt Jr. and Ron Swanson jealous, as well as a homemade Pineapple Express sequel trailer with Rogen and Franco you almost wish were real. While it's hard to categorize these as "performances," they really are in every sense. Even that's a joke in itself when in one of the film's first scenes Rogen is harassed at the airport by a papparazzo asking why he always plays the same role over and over. That these guys all definitely seem in on it and clearly don't take themselves seriously in the slightest is at the crux of all the best scenes.

They have the right lead in Baruchel, who's great as a socially awkward hipster struggling to hang on to his friendship with Rogen despite his disdain for L.A. and everyone in it. It was smart making him the only semi-normal character in the movie, giving the audience an eyes and ears, not to mention someone really likable to root for. That everyone now gets to see just how good the former Undeclared star is may end up being this movie's biggest contribution. There's definitely a lack of female presence, with the exception of Emma Watson's extended cameo that puts her at the center of a joke that really isn't funny. While I can't say it directly contradicts with the rest of the film's tone, something about it does seem especially mean and tone-deaf. While it's arguable this joke could have even worked under any circumstances, they're undeniably way off with the execution, revolving the film's cruelest joke around an actress that whose presence instantly makes the situation seem horrifyingly uncomfortable rather than comical.

Very little needs to be said about the apocalyptic aspect of the story because if it were excised entirely I'm not sure you'd be left with something that's all that different. The special effects strike the right balance in that they're cheap enough looking to be funny, yet impressive enough looking to pass off as disaster movie worthy. But the actual apocalypse is the weak link in this, taking a backseat to all the meta references and existing primarily as the creative catalyst to strengthen Rogen and Baruchel's bromance. So by those standards it does undeniably succeed, especially at the finish line.

If I could pick a project from these actors that this most reminds me of in terms of tone it would probably be the Franco-McBride starring lowbrow comedy Your Highness, only with the Apocalypse standing in for a medievel adventure. It's ironic they justifiably trash that during this, and while actually comparing the two may be stretching it, there are definite similarities in terms of the style of humor. This is the End is much smarter and funnier, but gets most of its leverage from extremely likable actors just having a blast together, even as the audience is sometimes left out in the cold.                   

No Strings Attached

Director: Ivan Reitman
Starring: Natalie Portman, Ashton Kutcher, Greta Gerwig, Cary Elwes, Mindy Kaling, Kevin Kline, Lake Bell, Olivia Thirlby, Ludacris
Running Time: 110 min.
Rating: R

★★ ½ (out of ★★★★)

If you're counting, No Strings Attached is the second of about 75 Natalie Portman movies released within the past three months. But that's okay. While most other actors or actresses' careers would greatly suffer from such overexposure (see Jude Law circa '04), Portman's an exception. I'm not sure it's possible for her to be overexposed given how much goodwill she's built up with moviegoers who seem to feel she can do no wrong. In my mind though, she actually needs to clock in all this work to justify the massive hype that's surrounded her for years. That's why taking a formulaic romantic comedy like this doesn't feel like a step down, if only because it's something different and presents the opportunity for her to stretch in a way she hasn't previously. Unlike others, it's advisable for her to "sell out" a little.

It's a credit to Portman that my expectations for what would normally be a fluffy, throwaway chick flick were somewhat high going in. Mostly, I was curious if she'd be able to strike while the iron's hot and capitalize on her recent Black Swan Oscar win, showing she's finally turned a corner and evolved into the multi-faceted actress her fans have often incorrectly asserted she's been throughout her career. Based on the evidence here, she's at least on her way. Natalie has a spark to her in this I've never seen. And she's actually funny. In fact, I was so taken by her she almost tricked me into thinking the movie works. It doesn't. At least not completely. Parts of it do and there are these little moments that are really smart and nail what it's like to be single in your late twenties-early thirties. But it starts off on the wrong foot and has a tough time recovering after that, as the script tries to jam in to many characters and do too much when it only really needs to focus on one thing.

Emma (Portman) and Adam (Ashton Kutcher) are childhood friends from camp who keep bumping into each other every few years. They reconnect again as adults when Emma is a resident at a local hospital and aspiring screenwriter Adam works as an assistant on a Glee-like TV show. When his father, famous former sitcom star Alvin Franklin (Kevin Kline), steals his girlfriend a drunk Adam goes through his cell phone looking for any one night stand he can find before waking up naked in Emma's apartment which she shares with three roommates. Both agree to an arrangement where they meet and have casual sex with no strings attached. As long as they're clear on the rules and it can't lead to anything more, then no one gets hurt. Interestingly, Adam is the one interested in taking things to the next level while the fiercely independent Emma is terrified of anything even slightly resembling a relationship and says she doesn't believe in love. The more Adam tries the more she pushes him away. If you've seen any romantic comedy you know where this is going, and more or less exactly how long it'll take to get there. Longer than it should.

The film makes its first mistake early in how it presents the "friendship" between its two lead characters. Needlessly skipping through time with three flashback sequences in a span of only a few minutes, they meet up, lose touch, meet up again, lose touch then finally meet up again for the story to start. As a result they seem more like acquaintances than friends, occasionally bumping into each other every five years or so. When they do sleep together and begin their arrangement we hardly care since they're essentially strangers. The opening minutes would have been better spent with one brief flashback sequence establishing them as friends since childhood so when they do hook up as adults it means more and the stakes are higher. It's a clumsy decision that seems minor on the surface but it affects the rest of the narrative, preventing me from fully engaging in the premise. It'll be interesting to see if the upcoming Friends With Benefits with Justin Timberlake and Mila Kunis makes the same crucial error. This takes a page out of the book of the recent, very similar Love and Other Drugs in that we have a jaded, cynical lead female character afraid to take the plunge into a relationship, a popular plot device lately and a reversal from the days when movies taught us that only guys can't commit. And like Love and Other Drugs, it tries to shoehorn an R-rated sex romp into a fluffy rom-com, though this doesn't have that film's heavy, depressing sub-plot and the tone doesn't fluctuate as wildly.

Looking as relaxed and comfortable on screen as she ever has, Portman knows the kind of movie she's in and isn't asked to do anything too crazy, which suits her just fine. A far cry from the manic pixie twerp she played in Garden State, Emma is a confident, intelligent woman realistically struggling with doubts and insecurities and Portman brings a certain warmth and sophisticated humor to the role. It won't go down as a great performance per se since she isn't asked to do anything incredibly taxing, but it may be more important than that in showcasing a different side to her as a performer we haven't seen. Who knew she could not only star in goofy chick flicks with Ashton Kutcher and actually enhance the material? As for Kutcher, the recent Sheen surrogate is like a bump on a log in this, failing to transmit even so much as a trace of charisma. A male model could have stood in for him and it probably wouldn't have made much of a difference in the film's overall quality, and that's coming from someone who doesn't actively dislike him as an actor and was curious how he'd fare opposite her. It still takes two to create chemistry and there's only so much Portman can do without any help. The decision to focus on both characters rather than take a point of view and present the far more interesting Emma as the true lead is a mistake, so we're left with a bunch of your typical supporting story threads, slightly more entertaining than usual due to the talent involved. Kevin Kline is funny as the philandering TV dad while the delightful Greta Gerwig and Mindy Kaling, both of whom could easily be headlining their own movies instead of supporting Portman, get a few moments as the underwritten friends jammed in for comic relief. Lake Bell plays Adam's boss, or the "other woman" brought in at the eleventh hour to cause a relationship rift, but bonus points for casting her against type as a socially inept geek. In an even weirder bit of casting, a nearly unrecognizable Cary Elwes shows up every now and again as a doctor whose function to the story is ridiculously unclear. His appearances are so randomly pointless they're almost a distraction, as if an entire sub-plot involving him was left on the cutting room floor, maybe next to the foot he sawed off the last time he played a physician.

Lost in all the hoopla surrounding the odd Portman/Kutcher pairing is the fact that this was directed by Ivan Reitman. Whether this bit of information was downplayed to salvage his reputation or not is irrelevant since it isn't that bad, thanks mostly to a glowing Natalie Portman, who gives this character a life far more interesting than the one supplied by the script. Despite its "R" rating this project was supposedly much edgier when it made the rounds in pre-production so I'm curious if concessions were made to appeal to a broader audience once the two stars jumped on board. You can feel a less formulaic rom-com struggling to break through, most notably when the two characters go on a miniature golf date that leads to the film's funniest moment. Then everything settles back into a predictably mainstream groove, dragging to its wimpy finish. No Strings Attached may be a slight misfire, but it's a brilliant career move for Portman, who shows her range and deserves credit for trying to challenge herself with a part you'd think would be outside her comfort zone.