a&e | FILM REVIEWS
Elf Girls in Love The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. Ian McKellen, Martin Freeman, and Richard Armitage star in a film written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Peter Jackson, and Guillermo del Toro, based on the book by J.R.R. Tolkien, and directed by Jackson. Reviewed by D.J. Palladino
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n the future, bad academic papers will no doubt deal in depth with Peter Jackson’s emphasis on cross-species hookups in his screen adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth epics. In the meantime, though, you can’t really deny the pleasures; clearly the second-most moving scene in The Lord BACK AGAIN: Martin Freeman returns as Bilbo of the Rings trilogy was the sexy reunion of Strider Baggins in the latest installment of The Hobbit (human, played by Viggo Mortensen) with his elvtrilogy. ish lover Arwen (Liv Tyler, who might look good as an orc). (The most moving scene was all of humanity bowing to Frodo and his friends.) Here is the second Mirkwood. The film peaks during a wine-barrel escape installment of The Hobbit, and again it’s trans-creature from wood elves — where we meet jaunty Legolas again romance that lights up the screen, when Kili (dwarf, — which plays out like an amusement-park-worthy flight played by Aidan Turner) makes amorous eye contact with downstream. The rest of the film intercuts between the breathtaking Tauriel (elf, played by Lost’s Evangeline Lilly). dwarves, Gandalf (who, true to form, abandons the quest Lilly told journalists she fought against the unnatural pair he set in motion), and the hardly relevant yet weirdly fasbonding, but it’s hard to deny the palpable sparks it loans cinating romance between sprite and dwarf. this film, which is better than the first chapter but still feels Jackson has rediscovered the fun in chapter two, and his plot embellishments neatly fill in the three-movie a bit lacking in its fantasy heart. The movie opens vastly, and Jackson seems thoroughly padding. The Hobbit is fun and worth seeing, but so far engaged as he follows the dwarves and Bilbo Baggins doesn’t imbue us with the bittersweet sense of a golden age as they near the Lonely Mountain and their inevitable gone as the Rings cycle did. This is an action film with cool confrontation with condescending Smaug. The camera magic; it’s not exactly a multiculti moment when dwarves doesn’t so much dog the action as prowl after it, turning and elves start making goo-goo eyes, but it doesn’t exactly corners, sneaking peeks, and swooping down, adding nice seem like Middle Earth either. It’s enjoyable fun but hard ■ paranoia, particularly through the druggy drowsiness of to take seriously.
Holiday Rabbit Hole
santa barbara
Tyler Perry’s A Madea Christmas . Tyler Perry, Larry the Cable Guy, and Anna Maria Horsford star in a film written and directed by Perry. Reviewed by Josef Woodard
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n actor/writer/director/phenom Tyler Perry’s latest visit to the big screen, the heart of the Christmas-flick enterprise lives somewhere between the comedic lines “If you put Viagra in the tree’s water, it’ll stay up all year” and the hopeful race relations message “Every generation sees a little less division.” Unfortunately, the comic zing — delivered by Perry’s sassy Madea character and the shameless jokester Larry the Cable Guy — far out-trumps the dramatic life or social-commentary aspects of this often hackneyed holiday-movie concoction. But, with the right forgiving yuletide mood, it’s a funky fun little guilty pleasure, with some well-meaning themes around the fringes. Center screen, without a doubt, is the oddball charmer of Perry’s sequel-ready character Madea, a large and largespirited African-American auntie with little to zero tolerance for lies or socially correct BS, and a hip, loosey-goosey way with the English language. Perry/Madea repeatedly saves the day in the film, flinging zingers, defusing pomposity and pretensions, and giving a classroom of children a zany and language-twisting “hip-hop” Nativity story. As for a narrative premise upon which to drape the farcical fodder, A Madea Christmas involves a surprise Christmas visit with Madea’s sister (Anna Maria Horsford)
PERRY CHRISTMAS: Tyler Perry wrote, directed, and plays the title character in A Madea Christmas . to her niece’s farm in Alabama, where the young Lacey (Tika Sumpter) has secretly married a white man (Chad Michael Murray), and is hesitant to fess up about her interracial pairing to her mother. Add to the mix a corporate entanglement with a public vindication attached, a teacher’s struggles with the system, the secularization of Christmas, and assorted racial tensions, and the film has its work cut out for itself. But while the overburdened thematic baggage threatens to get in the way of a good time, comedy will and does win out. Sentimental as all get-out, but one of those movies from which we expect the inevitable end-credit “outtakes,” A Madea Christmas is icing on the Perry/Madea franchise cake, and our holi-dazed senses make it all go down easier ■ than it should. DEcEmbEr 19, 2013
THE INDEPENDENT
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