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May 1-7, 2008
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Visiting hours
by Michael Phillips
Harold & Kumar go to Sequel Town
by Michael Phillips
Visiting hours
by Michael Phillips
The title The Visitor is nothing special. Richard Jenkins, best known as Nathaniel Fisher on Six Feet Under, isn’t a household name. But Jenkins and The Visitor make lovely music together. It’s a case of a veteran character actor slipping on a leading role like the most comfortable pair of pants in the world.
What sort of presence is Jenkins? He would’ve been ideally cast as the lead in About Schmidt (a film, to be sure, unlikely to reach a wide audience without Jack Nicholson). With his diffident geniality and soothing this-won’t-hurt-a-bit speaking voice, Jenkins embodies the essence of a certain kind of Midwestern male — anonymous but ubiquitous, with interestingly ordinary features. He doesn’t have Hollywood skin, or Hollywood hair. For decades he’s practiced the art of serving a scene or two, or sometimes three, and then getting out of the way.
In The Visitor Jenkins has his moment at last. In writer-director Tom McCarthy’s story he plays Walter Vale, an economics professor at a small Connecticut college. A widower, he hasn’t so much moved on as moved into himself, quietly. On a rare visit to New York City, Walter walks into his drably furnished apartment only to find he’s not alone. Someone named Ivan has sublet the flat to a young couple, Syrian-born Tarek (played by Haaz Sleiman) and his Senegalese girlfriend, Zainab (Danai Gurira). It’s a case of decent people caught in an awkward circumstance. Walter decides to let this couple stay on a while.
McCarthy previously wrote and directed The Station Agent, which I liked. This one’s no less deliberate, even schematic, but it’s a fuller and more moving experience. McCarthy’s drawn to characters who say only as much as they need to. In The Visitor, music does most of the communicating. Tarek, a musician whose specialty is the djembe, tutors Walter (who has recently quit his piano lessons) on the African drum. Watching Jenkins — who resembles an elongated version of Bob Newhart — trying to find his place in a drum circle in a Manhattan park is a lesson in the necessity of shaking up a routine.
The Visitor isn’t explicitly political, but its story line involves Tarek’s being arrested and threatened with deportation. He and his lover are both in the country illegally. Tarek’s mother, played by the soulful Hiam Abbass, arrives from Michigan to help Walter get her son out of detention. The ironies abound: In New York to deliver a paper at a global economics conference, Walter is confronted with a personal matter of geopolitics. McCarthy nudges Walter and Tarek’s mother, Mouna, toward a tentative friendship with the promise of something more.
You may not believe everything you see in The Visitor, and certain developments lack nuance. Walter and Tarek become friends virtually overnight, and while being held for questioning, Tarek seems suspiciously upbeat for one too many scenes before the desperation kicks in. Yet you’re drawn into Walter’s situation, and the supporting characters aren’t there simply to amplify the main character. It’s a simple, moving picture, and it’s a pleasure to see Jenkins strut his stuff, albeit in the lowest key imaginable.
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Harold & Kumar go to Sequel Town
by Michael Phillips
Greasy, hazy good fun, Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (2004) got by on a 4 a.m. mixture of explosive-emission toilet jokes, gratuitous nudity and Neil Patrick Harris as himself. Everything took place in one night, hinging on a single quest rife with detours. Crass? Yes. But there was a merry spirit to it all.
A far more strident sort of crassness pervades Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. The sequel picks up and tokes up where the original left off. New Jersey roommates Harold and Kumar set off for Amsterdam, so that Harold can chase the woman of his dreams (Paula Garces) while the lads can smoke all the mezz they desire. On the plane Kumar hauls out a homemade bong, which is mistaken for a bomb. Off to Gitmo! Off to the land of tiresome fellatio gags!
The escape of the title takes about 45 seconds. The rest of the movie, written and directed as lurching, occasionally funny skits by Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, keeps H&K one step ahead of a venal Homeland Security chief (Rob Corddry), and Kumar on the trail of his ex-girlfriend Vanessa (Danneel Harris). The ex is due to marry a Texas family friend of the George W. Bush clan. Bush himself, portrayed by the world’s worst Bush impersonator, shows up late to this fairly draggy party in order to get high with the boys and explain to them, in relative sincerity, that “you don’t have to like your government to be a good American. You just have to love your country.”
At least one scene rivals anything in the first outing. It’s a flashback to H&K’s college days, complete with perfect haircuts and pleasingly nostalgic vibe, a memory of when Kumar met the lovely Vanessa. I suppose the whole film couldn’t be like this. The rest of the time you find yourself smiling at some of the bits, wincing through many, many others, and ultimately wondering if the pacing would’ve improved had either H or K developed a terrible cocaine habit.
–MCT
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