MY MOVIE SHELF: Horrible Bosses

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 54 Days to go: 38

Movie #386:  Horrible Bosses

I’ve had some great bosses over the years. I’ve also had some godawful ones. For every boss I’ve had who really valued me and appreciated my work, I’ve had one who would encourage me to be casual and friendly with her, then assess me as unprofessional on my reviews, or one who would use me as a scapegoat to get out of jams, or one who would be openly sexist and demeaning, or one who would be basically incompetent and would need me to do my job and his too. I think a lot of people have these experiences from time to time, so Horrible Bosses is hugely relatable as fantasy wish-fulfillment. It’s also rip-roaringly funny.

Jason Bateman, Jason Sudeikis and Charlie Day are great as friends Nick, Kurt and Dale. In their own ways, each of them portray both the straight man and the comic role at different times. Their interactions are goofy and spastic one minute, sarcastic and snarky the next, but somehow it all works. However, if you were to think in terms of a comedy duo where one guy is the straight man and one is the banana man, than really all three friends (Nick, Kurt and Dale) are the straight men while all three of their respective bosses — Harken (Kevin Spacey), Bobby Pellit (Colin Farrell) and Julia (Jennifer Aniston) — are their counterparts. (Julia is definitely a big banana fan.)

Each boss character is played to the nines, at the extreme end of the scenery-chewing, batshit crazy spectrum. They look like seriously the most fun characters in the world to play, because they just go all out inappropriate in every conceivable way. Harken is a sadistic, jealous, ball-busting, manipulative, calculating, murderous fuck. Pellit is a sexist, misogynistic, bigoted, dickweed cokehead d-bag (with a comb-over and a pot belly that is HILARIOUS to behold). And Julia is a psychotic, oversexed lunatic.

To the shock of no one, I’m sure, Jennifer Aniston’s performance is my absolute favorite of the entire film (even including Jamie Foxx as the hysterical pseudo-thug Motherfucker Jones). She plays diametrically opposed to type as a dentist with an extreme capacity for sexual harassment. (“That’s rape! You’re a raper!”) For reasons completely unknown, Julia is obsessed with Dale’s junk and she will do absolutely anything to get a piece of it. It’s a nice role reversal, actually, on your typical sexual harassment storylines, and it’s incredibly funny because it’s so balls-to-the-wall. Aniston has no fear whatsoever being as sexual and as bold as she can possibly be, which, let’s face it, should be a regular thing because it’s so great. Shrinking, insecure violets are so last century. Embrace your sexuality, ladies! (Just don’t sexually harass and/or assault anyone. That’s bad.)

Horrible Bosses is chock full of jokes and rich with stellar performances. And it also confirms my suspicions that watching lots of Law & Order will one day come in handy if I’m ever accused of a crime. That’s a win-win.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Necessary Roughness

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 185  Days to go: 185

Movie #192:  Necessary Roughness

A football movie next in line on a football Saturday? It’s like kismet. Only I didn’t want to use up all my football mojo before the Big Game, so I had to wait to put Necessary Roughness on. Blissfully, I couldn’t think of better circumstances to watch honestly one of my absolute favorite sports movies.

Welcome to Texas State University, home of the Fighting Armadillos, a fictional college coming off a national championship and facing massive sanctions for illegal payoffs and drug use and boosters. Enter Ed Gennero (the ubiquitous early ’90s presence of Hector Elizondo), a no-nonsense coach intent on fielding an honest team, even with only one returning player (Charlie Banks, played by recent Wipeout contestant Andrew Lauer) and almost everyone playing Ironman (both offense and defense).

Notable roster includes:

Paul Blake (Scott Bakula) at Quarterback. Blake was a high school phenom over fifteen years earlier, but never entered college due to family issues. Can he fit in with these young kids as “the arm of the Armadillos?” Uh, duh. Bakula has always been one of the sexiest older men in the world to me, and I’m sure part of the reason I was so drawn to this movie is because it starred him (Quantum Leap being one of my absolute favorite shows at the time). He’s athletic and musical, can pull off brooding and funny, and he is extremely well put together. Even better, he doesn’t become a college quarterback and take up with some 20-year-old hottie with daddy issues, he falls for his Journalism professor, Suzanne Carter (Harley Jane Kozak), making age-appropriate romance in a silly sports movie truly compelling.

Comedian Sinbad shows up in this — a perfect vehicle for him honestly — as Andre Krimm, a science professor who quit football with a year of eligibility left and joins the team as a defensive leader. “Andre does not eat raw meat, ’cause Andre is a vegetarian,” but he does like to “pa-ar-ar-tay.”

Jason Bateman! Jason Bateman is hilarious, eons before Arrested Development and Horrible Bosses made him an absurdist straight man extraordinaire, as Edison, a pampered playboy rich kid who has cheerleaders do his homework for him but buckles down with Krimm to pass all his exams and maintain eligibility. The greatest offense he can think of is someone punching his quarterback after being bought a beer.

Samoan Peter Tuiasosopo plays center Manumana the Slender, and is basically adorable, as well as honorable and sweet and totally great. Especially with regard to the team’s kicker, women’s soccer star Lucy Draper, played by Kathy Ireland. “She’s got some foot.” “And it keeps getting better on the way up.” Of course, when she’s welcomed to football with a hard hit to the turf, she welcomes the balls of a Kansas Jayhawk linebacker to her foot, so it all works out.

The Texas Penitentiary team shows up for a practice scrimmage, too, populated by, among others, Ed “Too Tall” Jones, Herschel Walker, Tony Dorsett, Dick Butkus, Evander Holyfield, Jerry Rice, and Jim Kelly.

As for non-players, you have Rob Schneider in his best role ever, as Armadillos announcer Chuck Neiderman, and having a WHOLE lot of fun up there in the booth, and making great use of his signature fumbalaya, fumbleruski, etc. schtick. “In a typhoon, it’s anybody’s game!” Then there’s Larry Miller in ridiculously bad cardigans as football hating Dean Elias, being “firm but fair” and creeping on Suzanne. (“It hurts when they poke you in the chest like that.”) But no one tops Robert Loggia as Defensive Coach Rig, who gets all the best lines and plays up his gruff, biting persona to maximum hilarity. Before Rig brings on Blake, he muses that if Gennero is going to “build an offense around a guy who throws like Edward Scissorhands, we’re going to be playing a hell of a lot of defense.” And when Gennero encourages Featherstone (Duane Davis) to keep his eye on the ball, Coach Rig suggests, “And keep your hands on the ball.”

“Holy Columbus Ohio” this is a funny goddamn movie.

As funny as it is, though, what makes Necessary Roughness great — despite it being a kind of standard underdog sports movie — is that they aren’t managing to win an unlikely championship or anything like that. No, they lose every game but one (which they tie) going into the final against the (also fictional) Texas Colts. It’s a messy, ugly end to a messy, ugly season, but Blake makes them a sexy, sexy promise: “We get into that endzone, you’re not going to feel any pain.”

If you need more than that in a sports film, you might just be asking for too much.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Juno

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 218  Days to go: 219

Movie #159:  Juno

I dressed up as Juno for Halloween three years ago, when I was pregnant with my youngest. Nobody knew who I was, but one guy at work guessed “someone from a movie about teenage pregnancy,” so I counted that in the win column, but I was pretty disappointed in the rest of humanity, if I’m being honest. Juno was a pop cultural touchstone in the late aughts, and I feel like more people should be aware of that.

Diablo Cody’s manufactured jargon script got a lot of backlash (not enough for her not to win the Oscar, but enough), but I think if you get past that mildly annoying affectation, it contains a really sweet and touching story. Juno (Ellen Page, breaking into the big time) is a junior in high school who indulged in some beautiful chair sex with her friend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera) and wound up pregnant. The movie takes us through the seasons as Juno’s pregnancy progresses and as she interacts and builds a relationship with the decidedly more upper class couple she’s chosen to be the adoptive parents, Mark and Vanessa Loring (Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner).

Page handles the quirky dialogue well without making it sound too rehearsed, and Cera being an adorable doofus is kind of his bread and butter, only this time he adds tangy organge tic-tacs to the mix. They make an awkward and clumsy couple, never sure how to act around each other now that their friendship has been strained by pregnancy and never able to be as vulnerable and loving with each other as they want to deep down.

Meanwhile, Bateman and Garner are excellent as an affluent couple who clearly want different things but haven’t discussed it. Vanessa is an open wound of desperation and heartbreak, so painfully in need of a child and terrified of never getting that chance. She grasps onto the hope that Juno brings, but also fears it, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Mark, on the other hand, is the other shoe. He’s a big kid afraid of growing up, afraid of being responsible, silently blaming Vanessa for railroading him into something he isn’t ready for.

There’s a lot of pain, a lot of sorrow, and a lot of hope and optimism in the film. J.K. Simmons and Allison Janney are snarky and supportive as Juno’s parents, not really putting up with any of her angst but loving her completely, making it perfectly clear they have her back no matter what. It has a great message about love and family, about finding someone who loves you for exactly who you are. It’s uplifting in that way, to the point where I honestly don’t even notice the forced quirkiness. I just notice the joy.

Because in the end, joy is what Juno is selling. Everyone should know that.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 288  Days to go: 277

Movie #89: Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

“Donde esta la biblioteca, Pedro?”

Dodgeball is a really funny movie that holds up to multiple viewings. Pondering why this might be today as I watched, I realized pretty quickly that it’s because Dodgeball is positively stacked with jokes. Jokes upon jokes upon jokes. Whatever your style of jokes preference is, Dodgeball has a joke for you.

Dry joke partisans will appreciate Vince Vaughn as Peter LaFleur, playing the straight, low-key guy against all the craziness around him. With the pop of an eyebrow and a one-liner at the ready, LaFleur is the king of the wry observation. Given Vaughn’s history of being both inclined to and in danger of taking things overboard, putting him in this role successfully reins him in and uses him to the movie’s best advantage. As a complement to Vaughn is Christine Taylor as Kate Veatch, a tough girl, a baller athlete and a consummate professional, she puts everyone in their places with cutting remarks. It’s the kind of stuff keen observers and dry wits appreciate.

Those looking for absurdist comedy, however, won’t be disappointed either. Dodgeball is practically bursting with it. From the cheerleading Donkeys to the Average Joe’s carwash, to the entire concept of a Dodgeball tournament, the whole film is silly and goofy and weird. There are also characters Patches O’Houlihan (Rip Torn) and Steve the Pirate (Alan Tudyk), whose entire existence is bizarre, not to mention the steaming ball of crazy named White Goodman (played by steaming ball of crazy Ben Stiller). White is a treasure trove of wackadoo, self-abusing (literally and figuratively) with food, obsessing over his appearance and throwing his nonexistent weight around in the biggest (haha) Napoleonic complex you’ve ever seen.

White is also constantly misusing idioms and mangling language, which is intellectual humor at its finest. Another great intellectual joke? There is a chest full of money at the end literally labeled “Deus Ex Machina.” These are the jokes not everybody gets, but the people who do love them all the more for their obscurity. Stiller is unsubtle enough with his stuff that it’d be hard to miss here, but it’s still pretty artfully and smartly done. White’s use of a deep, raspy voice when he wants to sound profound is hilarious, especially when what he actually says is nonsense. And yet, White’s surplus of funny doesn’t stop there.

Physical comedy fans have a lot to look forward to in Dodgeball, and White Goodman’s performance of “Milkshake” over the end credits is a major highlight. It’s not the only one, though. Stephen Root is a delight as awkward, dorky Gordon, and I’ve long been a fan of Justin Long’s hapless earnestness (or earnest haplessness). Long, especially, has been a favorite of mine since his turn in the TV show Ed, and here, playing the character Justin, he’s just as lovable, just as jittery, and just as uncomfortable in his skin. His cheerleading routines and his workout attempts are great, but him getting hit in the head with that wrench (“If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball.”) is gold. Another skilled purveyor of physical comedy is Missi Pyle, who is always willing, in every role she’s ever taken, to completely forsake her own vanity for the good of a role. She’s like Melissa McCarthy and Anna Faris in that way, only she gets far less recognition for it. Here, Pyle stars as Fran, some Eastern European Slavic athlete with a fierce unibrow and jacked-up teeth. With a deep voice and a terrifying mole, she’s the scariest player on any team.

The place Dodgeball really shines, though, is as a sports parody. Not just a sports movie parody — though it does touch on the clichés of the passionate coach, the intense training montages, the underdog victories, the noble cause, the huge setback, playing with The Force, and the motivational speech — but a parody on all aspects of sports. There are the Dodgeball Dancers, the hilarious fan signs in the crowd (“Joe’s Knows Balls.”), ESPN 8 “the Ocho,” the tagline “Go Balls Deep,” the intricate and confusing rules, the silly little red penalty rope the ref dangles in front of White for a warning, the overblown introductions of all the teams, and the two commentators played by Gary Cole (as the play-by-play man) and Jason Bateman (in a huge and fabulous departure from the kinds of roles he usually plays, as the flighty, rockstar color commentator). Cole is gloriously self-serious, dropping brilliant lines about the Helsinki championship of 1919 and the perfect, “Do you believe in unlikelihood?!” Meanwhile, Bateman is distracted and cavalier, making the kind of useless and nonsensical comments any sports fan knows aren’t too far off the mark from the things real commentators say.  (Watch a game sometime — any game. You’ll see what I mean.)

I first saw Dodgeball in the theater with my brother — one of the few times we’ve hung out together, just the two of us, given our big age difference and the substantial geographical distance between us — and it’s a memory I really treasure because of that. I always think of him when I watch it, but I also enjoy the movie on its merits. Those merits being lots and lots and lots of jokes. I always appreciate funny.

“Fuckin’ Chuck Norris.”