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T HE G AZ ET T E
Thursday, February 6, 2014 lr
AT THE MOVIES
‘Labor Day’: Joyce Maynard novel loses credibility on screen BY
MICHAEL PHILLIPS CHICAGO TRIBUNE
(From left) Kate Winslet is Adele and Josh Brolin is Frank in “Labor Day,” written for the screen and directed by Jason Reitman.
PHOTO BY DALE ROBINETTE
The thesis of “Labor Day,” taken from Joyce Maynard’s novel, was summed up well by The Washington Post headline affixed to the Post’s book review: “Sometimes it’s okay to pick up a scary drifter.” In the fictitious town of Holton Mills, N.H., 13-year-old Henry has become the emotional caretaker for his depressed, agoraphobic single mother, Adele. Numerous miscarriages have eroded her sense of stability; monthly trips to the local supermarket are all she can handle. On one of those shopping trips, Henry’s confronted by a prison escapee, Frank, who is bleeding from the gut (he escaped during surgery), and is looking for a place to lie low for a while. Half-threateningly, halfreasonably, he persuades Adele to aid in his plan. Over an eventful and sundappled Labor Day weekend, Frank reveals himself to be the honor-bound, charismatic handyman of Adele’s dreams. He teaches Henry to throw a baseball. He teaches a wheelchair-bound neighbor kid to play baseball. He changes the oil in Adele’s station wagon. And in the most solemnly cringe-worthy scene of the new movie year, Frank pries open Adele’s and Henry’s love-starved hearts with his stunning kitchen skills, as he bakes his newfound makeshift family a peach pie with a crust so flaky and filling so photogenically luscious, it’s as if he has become the star of his own show: “Top Chef, Convicted Murderer Division.” We can buy a lot in fiction, on the page. The movies make romantic balderdash easier to swallow in some ways but tougher in others. Writer-director Jason Reitman’s studious adaptation of “Labor Day” has too much taste and high-minded respect for Maynard’s book to play
LABOR DAY n 2 stars n PG-13; 111 minutes n Cast: Josh Brolin, Kate Winslet, Gattlin Griffith, Clark Gregg n Directed by Jason Reitman
up the pulpy exploitation angle. So we’re left with some first-rate actors doing what they can to fill every sensually fraught glance with trace elements of human character. Kate Winslet has such sound and reliable dramatic instincts (That Face doesn’t hurt, either) she very nearly makes something of Adele. Josh Brolin lets his mellow, insinuating voice do the heavy lifting as tight-lipped Frank, a hunky amalgam of Shane and a drifter out of an William Inge play. Gattlin Griffith is young Henry, in the throes of confused adolescence; Toby Maguire provides the voice-overs as older Henry, looking back at the Labor Day weekend of his youth, when an escape to Canada was on the horizon and his feelings regarding Frank, and Henry’s amiable but distant birth father (Clark Gregg), made for some serious soul-searching. Reitman has made his considerable name on a peppy, slick brand of comedy, beginning with the gently satiric “Thank You for Smoking,” moving on to “Juno” and “Up in the Air,” though others prefer the meaner edge of his recent “Young Adult.” “Labor Day” is Reitman’s fifth feature and his first tonal misfire. For all his skills, Reitman hasn’t fully mastered the director’s most important tool: the B.S. detector. If he had, he wouldn’t have allowed composer Rolfe Kent to lard the film’s pie-baking sequence with the most egregiously sensitive solo guitar lines ever heard outside a freshman dorm room.
FOCUS FEATURES
Zac Efron and Imogen Poots star in Focus Features’ “That Awkward Moment.”
‘That Awkward Moment’: Sex and the city and three bros BY
MICHAEL PHILLIPS CHICAGO TRIBUNE
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More grating than peppy, the Manhattan-set romantic comedy “That Awkward Moment” proceeds as a series of awkward moments in search of a premise and a protagonist a little less stupid. Zac Efron bed-hops around as writer-director Tom Gormican’s narrator/hero. He’s a graphic designer whose life is one long hookup interrupted by beers and shots and trash-talk and Xbox with guy friends. This lady-killer, meant to be fetchingly blase on the surface and a fine fellow underneath, comes off like such a pluperfect egotist, you find yourself rooting for everyone but him. The casting exacerbates matters. The film stars Efron and co-stars several other youngish performers more interesting and wittier than Efron. We could start that list with Mackenzie Davis, a genuine talent with unpredictable comic timing and a self-effacing quality. We could move on to Miles Teller (demeanor of a Cusack, voice like Jonah Hill, but with his own thing), lately of “The Spectacular Now.” Or to Michael B. Jordan of “The Wire” and “Fruitvale Station,” stuck playing a neutered tag-along to his horn-dog pals. Or to Imogen Poots, the woman who shakes Efron’s character out of his arrested adolescence.
THAT AWKWARD MOMENT n 2 stars n R; 94 minutes n Cast: Zac Efron, Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Mackenzie Davis, Imogen Poots n Directed by Tom Gormican
Gormican’s gimmick goes like this. When Mikey, the Jordan character, gets dumped by his wife, Jason (Efron) and Daniel (Teller) make a vow with Mikey to stay single and horn-doggy forever. No serious relationships! But they all start falling for their respective special someones and then go to aggravating lengths to hide the fact they’re falling. The women are doormats, waiting for the men to grow up, or not. It’s nice to see a movie in love with New York City, but “That Awkward Moment” sets such a low bar for Jason’s redemption it becomes a drag. When Jason hits rock bottom, emotionally speaking, he fails to show up at his sort-of-girlfriend’s father’s funeral. Efron does his limited, earnest best to activate the drama inside the comedy, while everybody else practices their throwaway technique. The best scenes belong to Davis and Teller; they’re loose and truthfully awkward, as opposed to artificially so.