She Said: Knight & Day/Eclipse
By Caroline Thibodeaux
July 7, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
We went to see Knight & Day the Friday after it opened. Had we gone to see it about ten years ago it may have been just fine. As it was and when it was, however, it was only fair-to-middling. Starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, this movie possesses just about every element necessary for fun, frothy escapist summer fare. Comedy, romance, a mysterious, handsome spy with almost inhuman capabilities, a gorgeous, sexy heroine in over her head and in the middle of the adventure of her life. Exotic locations, wild chase scenes involving a Ducati and hungry bulls thundering through the streets of Cadiz. Murderous strangers on trains, Spanish arms dealers, bikinis – the list goes on and on. Every penny spent on the production of this film is up on the screen, but for whatever reason – and through no fault whatsoever of the leads – it’s all just…meh.
Part of the reason may be because we’ve seen this movie done before and in a fresher, more electric way. The romantic adventure comedy is one of my favorite filmic sub-genres. Nothing is more enjoyable than seeing an uncertain yet puckish woman coming into her own mentally, spiritually and sexually as a result of being chased around the globe by super-spies and deranged assassins. The thrill of watching a heroine survive yet another impossible challenge in the face of death as she becomes ever more aware of her worth, intelligence and strength – I’m all over that like a pack of Teamsters at the Golden Corral buffet.
The problem may lie in the writing of Diaz’s character, June. She may just be too infantile to be believable or to fully root for. It’s a disturbing trend in lighter-hearted studio films these days – the women are often just idiots. See any number of movies which have come out recently and are usually about nothing more than a smart woman going insane over someone’s wedding, or anything starring Katherine Heigl. Perhaps if June had more steely determination and was about something more than “I restore classic cars - end of story”, maybe the movie would have come off as more than the red-headed stepchild of Romancing the Stone and True Lies and the second cousin twice removed of North by Northwest.
As stated before, I don’t think the fault lies with either Diaz or Cruise. They are both pretty winning in their roles and they both bring the entire weapons cache of their Movie Star arsenals to their portrayals. Ridiculously attractive, with a true sense of familiarity and ease about each other, the former co-stars of Vanilla Sky both fully bring the physical, the cute and the funny, but in the end it’s still somewhat of a losing cause.
Director James Mangold (the far more superior Walk the Line, 3:10 to Yuma and I don’t care what anyone else thinks but Kate & Leopold, too) could have toned down the constant jumping around from location to location (hooray for tax credits!) and focused more on creating a more substantive characterization for June and figuring out a way to not waste Peter Sarsgaard as a CIA agent out to bring down Cruise’s Roy Miller – a super-agent who may or may not have gone rogue.
There must have been a way to combine all the elements Mangold had at his disposal and create a much more compelling action comedy. It’s not by any means awful, but he just didn’t quite get to where he should have. Still, it’s harmless enough and even if this review is not a full endorsement, obviously much, much worse things have occurred at the multiplex this summer and they were expensive too. (Hello, Jonah Hex). With that said, Knight & Day is definitely a wait-for DVD.
To my pleasant surprise the Big Daddy accompanied me to opening night of The Twilight Saga: Eclipse – The IMAX Experience. And perhaps to the chagrin of my Webmaster/Editor, we’re going to review that one too. How’s that for a segue?
I would never describe myself as a TwiHard. That’s too much like admitting I have a substance abuse problem. I read the books and enjoyed them, finding them strangely addictive. I realize crack is also strangely addictive and it’s not good for you, and neither is Twilight really. But author Stephenie Meyer was able to create a world within these books that I wasn’t able to tear myself away from – I needed to see what was going to happen with these characters. All of this despite the fact that I couldn’t stand the character of Bella Swan and 95% of the time I wanted to slap Edward Cullen around. A lot.
These two kids are the awful side-effects of this particular habit. I was glad when Edward took a powder in the second book New Moon because 1) He was gone and 2) There were a lot less truly nauseating moments where Bella would continuously wax on about how unbelievably beautiful Edward was. Strangely enough, crap like that never stopped me, though. I just kept reading and enjoying. Maybe I’m more of a TwiHead than a TwiHard because TwiHards don’t know that it’s bad. I’m fully aware that it’s bad, I just don’t care. And I’m not sure what it is about these books (crack) that so fully command the audience’s attention.
My co-worker put it succinctly – “You either need to be a 14-year-old girl or you need to have been a 14-year old girl.” When she said that I thought back briefly to the masochistic hell I used to put myself through when I was a hypersensitive teenager, usually over some tragically mundane guy who deep down I probably knew wasn’t really worth it. Perhaps what all us TwiHards and TwiHeads relate to is that we know when we were teenagers that we were as perfectly average as Bella Swan. So wouldn’t it be great if we could (through Bella) tap into and relive all of that teenaged angsty super-emotion and this time feel it for one boy (or two) who was truly special and perhaps even deserving of all those feelings? I guess that’s why some call it Fantasy. And some call it crack.
I make sure to take my cracky self to every Twilight movie on opening weekend if not opening night. I do this for a few reasons. I always try to support movies marketed towards women (if they are ones I want to see) on opening weekend because opening weekend is what Hollywood pays attention to and I’d like to see Hollywood continue to make female-centric movies. Granted, there will always be some idiot box-office prognosticator out there who will publicly claim to not understand how a movie geared toward women, with a woman in the starring role actually made money. And conversely, when one of these oddities that simply can’t be explained does open well and makes some dough, there will also always be someone in the studio who will take the credit for the success, whether he or she had anything at all to do with it. So it’s important to me to get out there and support these films if possible.
Another reason is the current age of entertainment media and the internet. There are literally spoilers everywhere and I. Hate. Spoilers. And lastly, I go for the sheer excitement and the rush. (Here I go with the substance abuse again.) There is nothing like the opening weekend crowd of a heavily anticipated fan boy/fan girl movie. I love the palpable feel of the energy and the buzz all around that makes going to a movie more like an Event.
Oh yes – the actual movie. As most of this readership is well aware, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse is the third movie adapted from the series of books by Meyer. It stars Kristen Stewart as Bella, Robert Pattinson as Edward, the vampire who adores her and as the third part of the love triangle; we have Taylor Lautner as teen werewolf Jacob Black. Lautner’s abdominals also play a critical role in this film and I specifically mention them because they actually give a much stronger performance than Stewart. This assessment is supported by the applause and cheers the abs receive from the audience every time they come out to play – which is often.
The film picks up where New Moon left off. Bella is getting ready to graduate from high school. She’d like Edward to turn her into a vampire sooner rather than later so that they can live happily ever undead together. Edward would like to get married first and do this all right and proper. He proposes to her about every 20 minutes or so. And Jacob’s really mad at Bella for wanting to turn into a vampire – the werewolves’ mortal enemy - so he’s not speaking to her…even though he’s desperately in love with her and wants her to choose him. And as silly as that may sound on Jacob’s behalf, playa might be on to something.
I particularly liked the humor that director David Slade is able to draw out of the actors and Melissa Rosenberg’s script. Pattinson and Lautner both seem to have a sense of humor about themselves so it’s fun to see them afforded the opportunity to utilize it from time to time. Stewart’s best scenes in the series continue to be between Bella and her dad Charlie (Billy Burke). She lightens up immensely here and plays these scenes opposite her usual mawkish and mopey self. Usually she just annoys the heck out of me and bores me to tears with her incessant mumbling and line delivery to the toe tips of her sneakers. She can’t be bothered to hold her head up long enough to even look at the friggin’ wolves, much less her own boyfriend. Time after time her character is a witness to amazing things and the most energy she can seem to muster up is all spent twirling her wig. I’ve maintained from the beginning of these films that Stewart is the luckiest woman in showbiz. She does nothing in these movies to deserve this role and the opportunities this franchise has given her.
While I was reading the books I remember tearing through Eclipse the fastest. I especially liked how the back stories for Jasper (Jackson Rathbone) and Rosalie (Nikki Reed) were then introduced and I think their moments translate well cinematically. Bryce Dallas Howard takes on the role of vengeful vampire Victoria who sets all the action of Eclipse in motion. She eats up the screen in her few moments in the film and she makes it terribly obvious who in this movie is in charge of their craft and who is out there just feeling around for it.
Oscar nominee Anna Kendrick is also used sparingly out of necessity, but she manages to give recurring Jessica some spark. The showdown between a batch of "newborn" vamps and an alliance of Cullens and werewolves provides the best action sequences the series has seen yet. All of this may not be enough to convince the casual moviegoer who is not part of the fan base to buy a ticket, but that’s more than okay if the opening weekend grosses are any indication. These movies, while far from perfect, play to their base and continue to improve. So while this review is also not a ringing endorsement, Eclipse will have to tide me over until November of 2011 when I can get my next fix.