  
| 
| ||||||||||||
  EW review: 'Looking for Comedy'? Not hereAlso: Bold 'Fight,' mild 'Tristan'By Owen Gleiberman  Sheetal Sheth and Albert Brooks in "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World." YOUR E-MAIL ALERTS(Entertainment Weekly) -- Albert Brooks used to be a master at making his audience squirm with laughter. In his early, funny films, like "Real Life" (1979), "Modern Romance" (1981), and the classic yuppie burlesque "Lost in America" (1985), he could spend whole scenes talking his way out of the trouble he'd just talked his way into. Harassing all comers, taking his audience on bumpy flights of defensive patter, he was the Larry David of his day -- the Last Earnest Jew in Los Angeles, a man whose ''conversation'' was really a plea, an argument, a prolonged noodgy onslaught of self-justifying riffs. The Albert Brooks who wrote, directed, and stars in "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World" is, in a sense, just an older version of that earlier verbal-fizz neurotic. This time, he even plays himself: famous comedian and filmmaker Albert Brooks, who, in a running gag, is now best known for voicing the role of a fish in "Finding Nemo." Called to Washington, Brooks is asked by the State Department to journey to India and Pakistan, where, as a means of advancing sensitivity in the war on terror, he's to spend 30 days exploring what makes the Muslims of the world laugh. He's given a couple of bodyguard gofers, nerdish Stuart (John Carroll Lynch) and surly Mark (Jon Tenney), and after hiring an Indian assistant, the comely, adoring Maya (Sheetal Sheth), he makes plans to present a comedy concert in New Delhi. Brooks is paler now, his eyes tugging downward where they once twinkled. He's still spinning in circles of neurotic banter, but with a key difference: In "Looking for Comedy," as in "The Muse" and "Mother," his semi-duds of the '90s, his words no longer come from a place of need. Brooks has mellowed; his air of squelched panic is gone. He now appears genial and complacent rather than possessed, as if he'd accepted his role in the universe but, for the sake of his movie, had to pretend to be the Albert Brooks of old. Donning an outfit that makes him look like the leader of Sgt. Vindaloo's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Brooks performs his big comedy act, which consists of sub-Vegas one-liners (''I was in Kashmir last weekend -- went to visit one of my sweaters!''), a lousy ventriloquist routine, and an impression of a Japanese man that would be racist if it weren't ... well, actually, it is racist. The movie isn't racist; it's just lame. If Brooks truly cared about Muslims or how their funny bones worked, "Looking for Comedy" might have had some zing, but all his character is interested in is the 500-page report he has to deliver -- a homework assignment from hell. "Looking for Comedy" lacks a genuine -- or funny -- point of view. The Indians are right to sit in silence at Brooks' dreadful concert, but the film still insists on portraying them as humorless stoics. Is that the joke? Brooks never connects with the Muslims on screen, all of whom are one-note characters. Smuggled into Pakistan, he puffs on a hookah and repeats his stand-up routine (once was bad enough), and he meets with executives from al-Jazeera, who want to star him in a sitcom called "That Darn Jew!" That's as close as the movie comes to a daring laugh, but it's not close enough; it's a cliche posing as post-9/11 edge. It's hard to know what "Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World" is trying to ''say'' when finding the comedy in an Albert Brooks film has become an increasingly dicey proposition. EW Grade: C- 'Why We Fight'Reviewed by Owen Gleiberman Even if you know that the phrase ''military-industrial complex'' was first uttered in 1961, during the final televised address of Dwight Eisenhower's presidency -- a farewell couched as a warning -- it's a revelation to see that speech to the nation, in all its glowering rectitude, interspersed throughout Eugene Jarecki's passionate and sobering documentary "Why We Fight." Eisenhower's declaration of the power, and danger, of the new American war machine had the fervor of a mission statement, yet Jarecki's decision to use it as a frame for his movie carries its own strategic thrust. It's not just the truth of Ike's words that grips us but the fact that they were spoken by a don't-rock-the-boat Republican, a World War II general devoted to defense. Before it gets around to updating how the military-industrial complex actually works (hint: It's grown a bit more powerful since 1961), "Why We Fight" asks us to revel in the irony that President Eisenhower now sounds like the sort of guy who would get tarred as a leader of the ''Hate America'' crowd. Jarecki is no glib ideologue thumbing his nose at power. He hits us early on with the eye-opening statistic that America spends more on defense than on all other parts of the federal budget combined, and he then showcases the vastness of the munitions industry at work. At a trade show, companies such as Lockheed Martin hawk weapons systems at booths like the latest generation of computer gizmos, sports cars, or bridal paraphernalia. The former CIA consultant Chalmers Johnson describes how the B-2 bomber includes parts made in each and every state, so that congressional approval for it is all but guaranteed. The clips of eager Congress members, of assorted ideologies, groveling before weapons bills induce a cringe. Gore Vidal, in all his trenchant cynicism, is on hand to testify to the deep structural interlacing of corporations and the military, but so is that long-haired peacenik John McCain. Each lends his own credence to the film's diary of 50 years of U.S. military aggression, which is juxtaposed with the distortions (e.g., the bogus Gulf of Tonkin incident, used to trigger the escalation of Vietnam) that too many of those actions have rested upon. Jarecki interviews Wilton Sekzer, a Vietnam vet and retired New York City cop who lost his son on 9/11, and Sekzer's outrage over the trumped-up pretenses that triggered the war in Iraq (the Saddam/al-Qaeda ''connection,'' etc.) stands in for a spreading national disillusion. "Why We Fight's" analysis of the Iraq war as imperialist folly is the least original thing about it. Yet by the end of the movie, with its images of Saddam Hussein videogames, crowds being roused by the explosions at an air show, and a desolate recruit who joins the Army because he has nothing else to do, we're left with a vision of America grown accustomed, if not addictively numb, to the deadening spirit of war. EW Grade: A- 'Tristan & Isolde'Reviewed by Lisa Schwarzbaum Aware that those not up on their Wagner operas may not be familiar with the title tragic lovers in "Tristan & Isolde," movie posters helpfully explain that the two are star-crossed predecessors to Romeo and Juliet. Then the ad's designers give up on context and pull in close on the pretty faces of "Spider-Man's" James Franco and Sophia Myles (soon to be seen more groovily in "Art School Confidential"), hoping that generic contemporary hotness will sell tickets. Not that I can suggest any better come-on for such a serious, old-fashioned, history-heavy romance. The epic is based on the ancient legend of an Irish princess who loved an English knight at a time in the Dark Ages when the uneasy tribes of Britain -- those squabbling Jutes, Angles, Picts, Saxons, and Celts -- scowled belligerently at the dominant kingdom of Ireland. When Tristan first meets Isolde in this sturdy, steady, pleasantly unspectacular telling, he's been left for dead in battle and she nurses him -- and loves him -- without revealing her royal identity. When next they meet, she's the surprise ''prize'' wife donated as political bait by her own scheming father to the winner of a tribes-of-Britain gladiatorial showdown, won by an unsuspecting Tristan on behalf of his kind protector, Lord Marke (Rufus Sewell). Torn loyalties, treacherous schemes, broken hearts, and bloody battles follow. Also featured: a few romantic interludes, and many moments when Franco's Tristan gazes like a rebel with a cause, handsomely miserable with tears in his eyes. A movie based on this grand legend has long been a great notion of moviemaking brothers Ridley and Tony Scott. In the end, though, they stuck to executive-producing duties and handed direction to Kevin Reynolds, a man used to costume drama after "The Count of Monte Cristo," "Waterworld," and "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves." Working with an explanatory script by Dean Georgaris, Reynolds is much more confident in scenes of realistic battle, or even muddy marketplace dailiness, than he is with scenes of desire. For that, Wagner's still the maestro. EW Grade: B- Click Here 
|
| ||||||||||||
| © 2007 Cable News Network. A Time Warner Company. All Rights Reserved. Terms under which this service is provided to you. Read our privacy guidelines. Contact us. Site Map. |
 |
|
to Try 2 RISK FREE issues of Entertainment Weekly
External sites open in new window; not endorsed by CNN.com
Pay service with live and archived video. 
