The Muppets
(Starring Jason Segal, Amy Adams, Jack Black, Chris Cooper)
The Muppets show us that nostalgia is just fine, as long as there's something worth remembering. Starting more than 40 years ago, Jim Henson, Frank Oz and their talented crew created broad characters worthy of geeky fandom. It's obvious that a few of those obsessed fans (co-writer Segal being on of them) created this homage to the goofy weekly variety show and the early movies.
â┚¬Å”There is only one Miss Piggy, and she is moi!â┚¬Â Miss Piggy announced, and yes, indeed!
So, these puppets do a lot of dumb stuff, like bringing attention to the fact that the movie is lagging and throwing in a montage. Thy also sing sweetly and dance in a world soured by grit, violence and reality television. It was their very nerdiness that first made them cool to some and annoying to others. In this case, the Muppets still have it.
Segal and his puppet brother are perfectly happy in Smalltown. Segal's girlfriend of 10 years (Adams) is a little less satisfied, but she loves that her beau supports his three-foot-tall, cloth-skinned brother. Of course, the puppet Walter found kindred spirits in watching the Muppets; he's obsessed. However, when Segal and Adams plan an anniversary trip to LA, they all find the Muppet empire in sad repair, about to be taken over by an evil oil tycoon (Cooper). The only way to save the theater is to pull a Judy Garland-Andy Rooney routine and put on a show, right?
â┚¬Å”Are the Muppets in 3-D?â┚¬Â curmudgeon Statler asks.
His cohort Waldorf answers, â┚¬Å”Nope, they're as one-dimensional as they've always been!â┚¬ÂÂ
The stupid gags are all here, updated for the movie. The genial warmth of Kermit and feminist spirit of Miss Piggy are well intact, as are Fozzie's bad jokes and Gonzo's recklessness. Yes, there's a moral, a simplistic one about finding your place in the world and believing in yourself. And every movie introduces a new characterâ┚¬â€Âthis times it's Segal's brother Walterâ┚¬â€Âin a tradition that may seem a bit cliché. But the Muppets were never really highbrow or groundbreaking. In fact, their purpose in life seems to be to remind us of all the old, dusty Vaudeville gags, but with puppets.
J. Edgar
(Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Armie Hammer, Naomi Watts, Judi Dench)
Sometimes a less-than-perfect movie can still be incredibly compelling. Director Clint Eastwood says that he didn't want to paint famous FBI Chief Hooverâ┚¬â€Âwho worked in the department for 48 yearsâ┚¬â€Âas overtly homosexual. Eastwood wanted the audience to decide. However, J. Edgar does make a strong argument for the man's sexual latency and whether that shaped the bureau and secret national policy to this day. Sure, it's speculative, but still fascinating.
J. Edgar (DiCaprio) was a little soldier, a paranoid pendant, and a momma's boy. In fact, he lived with his mom (Dench) until she died. He had a loyal secretary (a wonderful Watts) and a handsome, fawning right-hand man (Hammer of The Social Network).
The script by gay scribe Dustin Lance Black (who won an Oscar for Milk) argues that Hoover's panic over his unexpressed sexuality drove him to shape the once-small bureau into a Federal powerhouse. Hoover constantly expanded his reach, playing politics, blackmailing, keeping secret files on everyone.
The film skips from Hoover's latter daysâ┚¬â€Âhis attempts to shape his own legacyâ┚¬â€Âto his past tackling anarchists, mobsters, and subversives. Sometimes he seemed right; other times he was manipulative, petty and incredibly lacking ethic. Through it all, Watts and Hammer were steadfast, implicitly understanding their roles. A sort of domesticity was reached, where J. Edgar and his â┚¬Å”buddyâ┚¬Â always ate lunch and dinner together, took vacations together, shopped for clothes together. This is fact; whether it was sexual is another question entirely.
So was this gay? Or was Hoover too scared to have it be gay? How did his fear shape his striving, his policy, his conniving, and his own self-deception?
He says it twice in the film: â┚¬Å”I refuse to be publicly humiliated!â┚¬ÂÂ
His â┚¬Å”palâ┚¬Â responds: â┚¬Å”I can see right through you. You're a scared, heartless, horrible little man!â┚¬ÂÂ
All the film's compelling questions aside, the movie has problems. The plot tends to meander, getting occasionally muddled. Worst of all, the crappy age make-up is just terribleâ┚¬â€Âa glaring inconsistency in a film that still deserves several Oscar nominations for acting.
Yet, it's a flawed flick about a flawed man, and both remain unquestionably worth our interest.
