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cert feature outing for the Montana juggernaut, there was never any doubt that the audience would come. More surprising is the fact that some attention (if not an exhaustive amount) has been put into the thing: Hannah Montana: The Movie is not the nakedly consumerist vehicle cynics like me have come to expect. In fact, it’s a broad-stroked, agreeable-enough lark about Miley putting Hannah aside to reconnect with her Tennessee roots – and make eyes at that farmfresh horse wrangler from her childhood. Cornpone caricatures abound, but so do worthy messages about responsibility – to family, community, even Mother Earth. (04/17/2009) – Kimberley Jones ★★★■Movies 8
IMAGINE THAT D: Karey Kirkpatrick; with
Eddie Murphy, Yara Shahidi, Thomas Haden Church, Vanessa Williams, Nicole Ari Parker, Ronny Cox, Martin Sheen. (PG, 107 min.)
Harper Harper (1966) D: Jack Smight; with Paul
Newman, Lauren Bacall, Shelley Winters, Robert Wagner, Janet Leigh. (NR, 121 min.) Summer Film Classics: Newman – Both Sides of the Law. Newman plays a hard-boiled private investigator who is based on novelist Ross Macdonald’s character Lew Archer. He’s hired to find the missing husband of a character played by Bacall. Delicious supporting work rounds out this mystery. (Double bill: Cool Hand Luke.) @Paramount, Tuesday, 9:30pm; Wednesday, 7pm.
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THE HANGOVER D: Todd Phillips; with
Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, Justin Bartha, Heather Graham, Ken Jeong, Mike Tyson, Mike Epps, Sasha Barrese, Rachael Harris, Jeffrey Tambor. (R, 99 min.)
The Hangover instantly has the feel of one for the ages. It is deliciously darker than Phillips’ previous comedies, Old School and Road Trip, but it isn’t as thick with malice as those credits suggest. “Bromance” is too dopey of a word for what goes on here; The Hangover honors the significance of male friendship without insisting on its primacy. The occasion here is the Vegas-set bachelor party for Doug (Bartha), organized by his three groomsmen: Phil (Cooper), straitlaced Stu (Helms), and Doug’s nonsequitur-spouting future brother-in-law, Alan (the sublime Galifianakis, so outré he’s toeing performance art here). They wake the next morning, surrounded by the spoils of the party (a scorched hotel suite, a missing tooth, a tiger in the bathroom), but with zero recollection of how it all happened. An edgier film could have been carved out of that premise, but you’d be hard-pressed to find one as consistently, relentlessly funny. (06/05/2009) – Kimberley Jones ★★★★■Alamo Ritz, Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek, Barton Creek Square, CM Cedar Park, Hill Country Galleria, CM Round Rock, Southpark Meadows, Dobie, Highland, Gateway, Lakeline, Metropolitan, Tinseltown North, Westgate
HANNAH MONTANA: THE MOVIE D: Peter Chelsom; with Miley Cyrus, Billy Ray
Cyrus, Emily Osment, Jason Earles, Lucas Till, Melora Hardin, Vanessa Williams, Margo Martindale. (G, 92 min.) I won’t pretend to understand the Miley Cyrus/ Hannah Montana phenomenon; it surely boils down to some combination of commercial savvy: Cyrus’ sweet, uncomplicated charisma and a tween market hungering for a happy compromise between relateability and wish fulfillment. In any case, for this, the first noncon-
Imagine That, at times charming and frequently sweet, is a family film with engaging performances, a straightforward moral for parents everywhere, and enough giggles to keep both parents and their young charges amused – all without a single fart joke. Murphy is Evan Danielson, a workaholic financial analyst that has become an archetype of the separated dad to his 7-year-old daughter, Olivia, who has conjured a band of imaginary friends to offset her lack of a caring father figure. As it happens, her invisible pals have a knack for finance, and soon dad and daughter are bonding over magic kingdoms and stock portfolios. All in all, Imagine That is an amiable detour from its star’s usual penchant for toilet humor and bad taste. Kids will empathize, parents will breathe a sigh of relief, and film critics will be much relieved at not having to thumb through their thesauri seeking another synonym for “gaseous.” (06/12/2009) – Marc Savlov ★★★ Metropolitan
LAND OF THE LOST D: Brad Silberling; with Will Ferrell, Anna Friel, Danny McBride, Jorma Taccone, John Boylan. (PG-13, 93 min.)
Sid and Marty Krofft’s Land of the Lost, which ran for three seasons beginning in 1974, chronicled the adventures of the Marshall family, who became trapped in an alternate universe where stop-motion dinosaurs battled it out with a race of lizard-men dubbed the Sleestak, and a furry little primate named Chaka pulled double duty as comic relief and narrative linchpin. The show was wildly imaginative, gamely acted, decidedly low-tech, and above all cool. So what to make of this bloated, noisy, and decidedly uncool remake by avowed Land of the Lost fan Silberling? I blame both pop-culture creep (what was once strange and vaguely subversive is now old hat) and Ferrell, who stars here as the dullish, food-obsessed, Matt Lauer-hating inventor Dr. Rick Marshall. Ferrell has been spinning his comedic wheels for what seems like ages now, and his once-entertaining schtick is now, officially, entering into the land of the lost career. (06/05/2009) – Marc Savlov ★ Movies 8, Tinseltown South
MONSTERS VS. ALIENS D: Rob
Letterman, Conrad Vernon; with the voices of Reese Witherspoon, Hugh Laurie, Seth Rogen, Will Arnett, Paul Rudd, Rainn Wilson, Kiefer Sutherland. (PG, 94 min.)
In the animated Monsters vs. Aliens, Susan (voiced by Witherspoon) is struck by an errant meteor on the morning of her wedding and morphs into a fivestories-tall bridezilla. The government quickly whisks her away to a containment center, where Susan – now called Ginormica – makes reluctant friends with a whole host of monsters, which is where the film finally has some fun. The film filters the fantastical plot doodlings of those campy sci-fi classics of yore through the modern formula for animated pictures. It’s a shame the balance didn’t tip more in the direction of the former, because there is something rather dopily sweet in its story of a misfit band of monsters unleashed from quarantine to defend Earth from an alien invader. The misfits, as ever, must take a back seat to the morality, and the result traffics in rote truisms that are admirable but perfunctory. (03/27/2009) – Kimberley Jones ★★ Movies 8
72 T H E A U S T I N C H R O N I C L E JULY 3, 2009 a u s t i n c h r o n i c l e . c o m
MY SISTER’S KEEPER D: Nick Cassavetes; with Cameron Diaz, Jason Patric, Abigail Breslin, Sofia Vassilieva, Evan Ellingson, Alec Baldwin, Joan Cusack, Thomas Dekker. (PG-13, 109 min.)
Anyone who watched his 2004 melodrama The Notebook knows Cassavetes is not a man to leave a spot of sap untapped, and in My Sister’s Keeper, he pulls out a very big drill indeed. After years of enduring painful and invasive procedures to prolong the life of her cancer-stricken sister (Vassilieva), Anna Fitzgerald (Breslin) is suing her parents (Diaz and Patric) for her medical emancipation. The film works best as a portrait of a family at war, with cancer and each other; there’s very little meat on the bone of the legal subplot, and it seems to only intermittently hold the attention of Cassavetes and his co-writer Jeremy Leven. My Sister’s Keeper is unfocused, pat, and predictable, in plot and dialogue, but the actors are so likable that when two characters push a box of Kleenex back and forth, one can’t help but sniffle in tandem. Unsubtleties be damned, our defenses fall. Meanwhile, Cassavetes’ reign as the go-to waterworks man remains uncontested. (06/26/2009) – Kimberley Jones ★★★■Barton Creek Square, CM Cedar Park, Hill Country Galleria, CM Round Rock, Southpark Meadows, Highland, Gateway, Lakeline, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South, Westgate
NEW YORK D: Kabir Khan; with John Abraham, Katrina Kaif, Neil Nitin Mukesh, Irrfan Khan. (NR, 152 min., subtitled)
Not reviewed at press time. Filmed in America, this Bollywood movie tells the story of three friends whose lives are thrown into disarray after the 9/11 attacks. (06/26/2009) – Marjorie Baumgarten Tinseltown South
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: BATTLE OF THE SMITHSONIAN
D: Shawn Levy; with Ben Stiller, Amy Adams, Owen Wilson, Hank Azaria, Robin Williams, Christopher Guest, Steve Coogan, Ricky Gervais, Bill Hader, Alain Chabat, Jon Bernthal. (PG, 105 min.)
Director Levy and returning screenwriters Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon have moved this sequel’s location from New York’s American Museum of Natural History to the D.C. Smithsonian, but virtually every other aspect of this follow-up was touched on (manhandled, actually) in the original film. Stiller is again cast as Larry Daley, a night watchman over ambulatory museum pieces. Azaria’s sinister Egyptian overlord, Kahmunrah, schemes to rule the world. Allying himself with Ivan the Terrible (Guest), Napoleon Bonaparte (Chabat), and a black-and-white Al Capone (Bernthal), Kahmunrah finds Daley and pals, chief among them a sassy Amelia Earhart (Adams), considerably more of a challenge to conquer than pyramid-building. The film has what feels like hundreds of hours of mindless noise and comic CGI chaos but only a handful of moments worth of real laughter. Much of that comes from Azaria, who proves yet again that he’s a master of fully immersive comic genius. (05/29/2009) – Marc Savlov ★ Barton Creek Square, CM Cedar Park, Lakeline, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South
OBSESSED D: Steve Shill; with Idris Elba,
Beyoncé Knowles, Ali Larter, Bruce McGill, Jerry O’Connell, Christine Lahti. (PG-13, 95 min.)
You can never underestimate the American moviegoers’ appetite for a juicy catfight. Obsessed unspools like one long tease for the girl-on-girl wrestling we know will eventually come. Until that climactic point (and even during it), Obsessed is a routine mash-up of Fatal Attraction, Disclosure, and The Hand That Rocks the Cradle in which happily married asset manager Derek (Elba) is sexually harassed by beautiful office temp Lisa (Larter). Of course, the dumb lug never tells his wife, Sharon (Knowles), or the company’s human resources department about Lisa’s inappropriate attentions, so by the time he discovers just how bat shit crazy she really is, Lisa has already invaded his away-from-office life. Beyoncé’s
Objectified Objectified (2009) D: Gary Hustwit. (NR, 75 min.) AIGA Design Series. This film, which premiered in Austin during this year’s South by Southwest Film Festival, is by the director who made Helvetica, a previous festival hit about the typographic font. The focus of his new documentary is on the complex relationship human beings have with manufactured objects. @Alamo Ritz, Monday-Wednesday, 7pm.
Sasha Fierce alter ego unveils itself in the film’s final battle. Fierce/Sharon manages this feat in high heels, to boot, while Lisa is barefoot in a T-shirt and underpants. Obsessed delivers in its limited way, even though we know exactly what to expect. (05/01/2009) – Marjorie Baumgarten ★★ Movies 8
THE PROPOSAL D: Anne Fletcher; with Sandra Bullock, Ryan Reynolds, Mary Steenburgen, Craig T. Nelson, Betty White, Denis O’Hare, Malin Akerman, Oscar Nuñez, Aasif Mandvi. (PG-13, 107 min.)
Only very rarely do romantic comedies reinvent the wheel, which is why whole decades passed between Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. At best, when we queue up for the latest studio romantic comedy, we can hope for a curve ball or two (hence the comic-relief bit player, sassy grandparent, and embarrassingly public avowal of love, all featured in The Proposal). When you strip all that away, what you’re left with is two deeply charismatic lead performers. Bullock plays the Canadian-born Margaret Tate, an all-work and no-play literary editor who, when threatened with deportation, bullies her long-suffering assistant Andrew (Reynolds) into a marriage of convenience. Fletcher demonstrates with The Proposal that she can put together a funny, able romantic comedy that is a cut above, but no more. Still, those leads are awfully likable, and if The Proposal doesn’t reinvent the wheel, merrily we roll along nonetheless. (06/19/2009) – Kimberley Jones ★★★■Alamo Drafthouse Lake Creek, Alamo Drafthouse Village, Barton Creek Square, CM Cedar Park, Hill Country Galleria, CM Round Rock, Southpark Meadows, Highland, Gateway, Lakeline, Tinseltown North, Tinseltown South, Westgate
RACE TO WITCH MOUNTAIN D:
Andy Fickman; with Dwayne Johnson, Carla Gugino, AnnaSophia Robb, Alexander Ludwig, Ciarán Hinds, Garry Marshall. (PG, 99 min.)
This third Witch Mountain outing is essentially the same stop ’n’ go chase film as its predecessors, but all things considered, it’s not half-bad. Dwayne “Don’t Call Me the Rock” Johnson, who appears to be following Ice Cube’s lead in his lateral career move from narcissistic, violent cartoon character to goofy, familyfriendly cartoon character, is spot-on as Jack Bruno, a self-doubting former racer and current Vegas cabbie who, with an assist from discredited but still, like, totally hot astrophysicist Dr. Alex Friedman (Gugino) saves the planet and the tweenage ETs (Robb and Ludwig, dialogue-coached, it would seem, by Stephen Hawking). Edited with zero tolerance for boredom and featuring a typical Disney self-empowerment morality, this race is entertaining and patently inoffensive matinee fare for kids 12 and younger and their adult overlords. (03/20/2009) – Marc Savlov ★★★■Movies 8