Water for Elephants
(Starring Robert Pattinson, Reese Witherspoon, Christoph Waltz)
Water for Elephants, adapted from the bestselling book, is a traditional, Hollywood-style romance with a big heart and an interesting setting. That's both its strength and its limitation.
Pattinson (finally in a role that adults might find sexy) is a down-and-out immigrants' son suffering through the Depression. On the day he was to take his final veterinary exam at Cornell, his parents die. He runs away and joins a circus owned by cruel ringmaster Waltz (Inglorious Basterds) and sexy but wimpy wifey Witherspoon. Patttinson falls into the couple's graces, becoming the vet for the company. The job includes training a just-acquired elephant in order to save the struggling show. Of course, Pattinson and Witherspoon fall into forbidden love.
The set of a struggling Depression-era circus is tantalizing and well realized. One can sense there is a fascinating world here, filled with performers, sideshow freaks, carnies and animals, all mistreated. The milieu is both rich and gritty, and the photography is sumptuous.
What doesn't work is how pat the main story is. Pattinson is noble and good, Witherspoon is the woman in need or rescue, and Waltz is the incorrigibly evil villain. These are roles all three leads could play in their sleep, and sometimes it feels as if they do. Thankfully, they have the circusâ┚¬â€Âthe other performers and the cool animalsâ┚¬â€Âto save them when the show in the main ring gets a little dull.
Arthur
(Starring Russell Brand, Helen Mirren, Jennifer Garner, Greta Gerwig)
Why would they remake the perfectly cute Dudley Moore/John Gielgud/Liza Minnelli version?
Way back in 1981, we could roar at the poor little rich man Moore as a selfish alcoholic. Now, 30 years later, watching Brand's version reminds us of how much has changed in our world: the rich get richer, the poor suffer, and the famous get entirely too much credit for doing nothing besides being famous.
Filthy-rich Brand plays an arrested adolescent whose drug of choice is alcohol. Nanny Mirren protects him from reality. Garner fights for Brand's affection and money. Gerwig is the woman who Brand should love, but the drunken a-hole doesn't deserve such a nice girl.
Will he marry the bitch, or will he get the sweetheart? Wanna guess?
There is not enough punch in this alcohol. Brand is funny, but he's never totally likeable. His rough Cockney accent doesn't jibe with his privileged upbringing. His lack of knowledge about real-world struggles is not cute; it's frustrating. Mirren is nifty when she's allowed to be vitriolic (in the same way that won Gielgud his Oscar). Mostly, though, her relationship with Brand seems Oedipal. Garner is merely Machiavellian. Only Gerwig is allowed to capture a level of the delight that Liza had in the original. Honestly, though, she should flee the immature Arthur.
In fact, we all should just step away from this watered-down libation.
Win Win
(Starring Paul Giamatti, Burt Young, Jeffrey Tambor, Bobby Cannavale, Alex Shaffer, Melanie Lynsky)
This wrestling flick begins charming and knowingâ┚¬â€Âa total winâ┚¬â€Âand then it just peters out into mediocre melodrama in its final minutes. That's not to say that the first two-thirds isn't totally delightful.
Giamatti is a small-town lawyer and part-time high school wrestling coach. He's also a self-described loser: his business is going under, he's having panic attacks, his friends (Tambor, Cannavale) are boobs, and his team can't win. Desperate for extra cash, he agrees to become guardian for a rich elderly man suffering dementia. It's unethical, but it just might workâ┚¬Â¦until the old man's grandson (Shaffer) shows up. Thankfully, Giamatti quickly discovers the boy might be the high school wrestling champion his team needs.
So much is nicely set up here. The humor is nuanced; Giamatti knows how to play these sighing, shrugging schlubs. His family and friends are also funny, and the intent is a quirky but heartfelt everyman comedy that recognizes our country's current economic downturn.
Then its strength drains from it. Teenaged Shaffer is fine for the disaffected part, but the real acting eludes him. His mother (the usually great Lewitsky) is flat and shrill. The last scenes of the movie lose all laughs. Sure, Win Win avoids the cliché of being Rocky for high school wrestlers, but it also forgets all the formidable sweetness and humor it started with. Constant comedy would have been a total win.
