She Said/He Said
Date Night/Clash of the Titans 3-D
By Caroline Thibodeaux
May 4, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Date Night stars Tina Fey and Steve Carell as a typical suburban New Jersey married couple with two kids. Real estate agent Claire and tax lawyer Phil Foster find themselves settled into an endless soul-sucking rut of work, taking care of the kids, and perfunctory lovemaking. Even their once a week date night has declined into a meek, rote activity where the Fosters make up storylines for the couples around them as they ingest gas-inducing potato skins. Life together has become stale and they are shaken when their best friends announce their impending divorce.
In an attempt to shake things up, Phil proposes they do date night a little differently and have dinner at a swank new restaurant in Manhattan. When they can’t get a table (on a Friday night in Manhattan at a new trendy place – duh), Phil throws caution to the wind and takes over the reservation of an absent couple by pretending he and Claire are that couple – The Tripplehorns. It turns out to be a chance he shouldn’t have taken as this simple case of mistaken identity throws the Fosters into a nightmare of crooked cops, mob bosses, sex trafficking, car crashes, blackmail and much gunplay.
Directed by Shawn Levy of the blockbuster Night at the Museum franchise, from a screenplay by Josh Klausner, Fey and Carell are a delight but it’s evident from start to finish that they are above the material and the writing doesn’t truly serve them. I would have liked to have seen Fey and Carell get the opportunity to cut loose a bit more – they’re both funnier than Klausner’s script. But even with that said, the movie is an amusing enough little diversion.
There’s strong supporting work from William Fichtner as a sex-crazed DA and James Franco and Mila Kunis as shady illicit doppelgangers to Claire and Phil. As the action-comedy unfolds, we catch a glimpse of a couple thoroughly in over their heads who manage to survive catastrophe after catastrophe relying only upon each other (and a determinedly shirtless Mark Wahlberg). It’s no surprise that they end up saving their marriage while in the process of saving their butts, but it’s still fun watching them get there. And I can think of a lot of worse ways to spend time with a significant other.
And one of those ways is by watching Clash of the Titans 3-D.
Full disclosure time – I was a fan of the remarkably cheesy version from 1981 from which the remake is based. I must have seen it at least 15 times – once in the theater and then 14 more times on HBO. I read Edith Hamilton’s Mythology three times and the legend of Perseus was always my favorite of the Greek myths. It always seemed to be one of the more hopeful myths and had such a great and happy ending. The version from 1981 was based loosely on that myth and couldn’t be considered high art anyway, but it was a good time and harmless enough. Laurence Olivier chewed the scenery as Zeus and I found it delicious. A hunky pre-L.A. Law Harry Hamlin played the hero, and even though there was that annoying mechanical owl sent by the goddess Athena (Bubo), old-school visual effects creator Ray Harryhausen provided a number of Saturday matinee thrills with the Kraken and Medusa.
By now I’d read reviews ranging anywhere from middling to awful regarding this current version of Clash (in 3D!) and I didn’t personally know anyone who particularly liked it, but I wanted to give it the benefit of a look-see anyway. I figured if I could find a way to enjoy the stinky fromage of the first one, this one couldn’t be that bad right? Right?
I was so wrong.
It’s just plain terrible. And the awfulness is even more magnified by the tacked-on useless “3-D” effects that were added on last minute by a studio too hypnotized by Avatar’s grosses to recognize that a better script, more capable direction and a charismatic lead might have gone a longer way towards making the film more profitable. Since the film wasn’t developed to be shot in 3-D, more time needed to be taken in order to create a more seamless weaving between dimensions. This time and effort was obviously not taken, the movie was released in visually bad shape and I, as a paying customer received the privilege of paying an extra four bucks for this crap.
The film barely glances at the actual myth of Perseus. This one seems to be more about man’s battle vs. the gods on Mt. Olympus than the legendary journey of the founder of Mycenae. The entire time I was watching the movie I got the feeling the creators were interested in making another film entirely but wanted to call it Clash of the Titans simply for the name recognition. I wouldn’t have really had a problem with that if they had bothered to put something on the screen that was even remotely compelling. But perhaps the main sin is that even with all of the drachmas spent producing this movie and with the capabilities of modern filmmaking at hand, the film is lifeless, joyless and entirely without a sense of fun.
Sam Worthington’s Perseus is a snoozy drag, drearily and dourly going about his business unhappy that he was born a demigod and all bullheaded sullen emo about his extraordinary legacy. The tedium is increased by Louis Leterrier’s pedestrian direction. None of Perseus’ team of warriors seems to have any real motivation to follow him and they’re all woefully undefined. The lovely Gemma Arterton (demigoddess Io) tries but is laid waste by the script. Liam Neeson manages to save some face as Zeus, but Ralph Fiennes’ Hades is so god-awful I think Fiennes drunkenly took on the role from a dare and pissed about being under contract, decided to play Hades as an unfortunate victim of botox and bad hair extensions stumbling his way between Olympus and the Underground in a weird-looking fireball while under the influence of Ambien. This one is a complete and utter pass.
I’m still not totally caught up on movies, but I do feel like a little dent has been made at least. I would have rather seen How to Train Your Dragon but I’m probably on my own for that one. It’s all good, though. The summer movie season is quickly upon us and there’s so much to choose from just about every weekend starting with this weekend’s Iron Man 2. I can’t wait to get to a lot of it and hopefully, (fingers crossing) in a much timelier manner.