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November 13-19, 2008
buzz@boulderweekly.com
Animated in Africa
by Michael Phillips
Men with soul
by Michael Phillips
Animated in Africa
by Michael Phillips
Madagascar (2005) made half a bil, and my preteen son certainly enjoyed it, especially for the penguins. The sequel, Madagascar: Back 2 Africa, is a better film, though — less manic, more easygoing. The first film referenced so many other movies so indiscriminately, from Chariots of Fire to Planet of the Apes to American Beauty, watching it was like being caught on a bus with a bunch of screenwriters on the way to a wisenheimer convention. The new one lays off that stuff, comparatively, and while there are booger jokes and such, you’ll likely avoid that Over the Hedge headache so many of these critter outings instill.
Marooned on Madagascar, Alex the lion (voice by Ben Stiller), Marty the zebra (Chris Rock), Melman the paranoid hypochondriac giraffe (David Schwimmer) and hippo Gloria (Jada Pinkett Smith) yearn for home in the Central Park Zoo, where starry-eyed, egocentric Alex’s antics have made him “king of New York.” The penguins rig up an old, busted plane, slingshot fashion, and zing the quartet (plus stowaways) not to Manhattan, but to Africa, somewhere near Mt. Kilimanjaro.
From there Back 2 Africa begins a serious poaching session on Lion King territory. Alex finds his parents — the late Bernie Mac provides the voice of daddy Zuba, big mane on campus — and with obvious allusions to Scar in The Lion King, Alec Baldwin lends his sterling basso distrusto voice to jealous Makunga, a petty and venal lion indeed, who exploits naive, showbizzy Alex for his own political gain.
When I say Back 2 Africa goes easy on the pop-culture jokes, I should clarify: One of the smarter things in the script is how Alex, who digs his Bob Fosse and Jerome Robbins dance moves, becomes the film’s primary pop-cult gag. (When he suits up for ceremonial battle, a fight he doesn’t realize will involve actual fighting, his war paint includes a dandy pair of tragic/comic masks.) This allows the rest of the movie to spread out and ease up in other ways, exploring other avenues. And naturally, most of the elements that made Madagascar all those mils are back, including lemur leader King Julien (Sacha Baron Cohen with a wittily un-peggable dialect), and the song — the song — “I Like to Move It.”
The visual style is typical, ultra crisp computer animation, bright, sharp, somewhat clinical. I took my kid and three of his pals to an IMAX screening, and while I could’ve done without the film’s martial arts slapstick involving the cranky old outer-borough lady on safari, in a role expanded from her Grand Central Station cameo in the first picture, well, if there’s one thing parenthood teaches anybody in this country, it’s that boys rarely fail to laugh at someone gettin’ it in the ’nads from a senior citizen.
—MCT
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Men with soul
by Michael Phillips
The funniest bit in the crude but diverting Soul Men really makes you miss Bernie Mac, who died in August, a few months after completing the picture.
Mac plays one half of the Real Deal, a Pips-like backup duo for a charismatic lead singer (John Legend) who eventually went solo, leaving his former partners to languish. We’re prepped by a brisk prologue and then, present day: Mac’s character, Floyd, is being put out to suburban, highly manicured pasture by his nephew-manager, while Samuel L. Jackson’s Louis ekes out a life in what looks like an SRO apartment. When their former cohort dies, VH1 announces a tribute concert to be held on the other side of the country, at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. Floyd wants to do it in the worst way, but he must persuade Louis to bury their long-held grudge (they loved the same woman, who left a daughter behind, now grown).
The standout bit in this fractious, formulaic comedy is simplicity itself. Bam, Jackson slams his apartment door on Mac, and Mac’s left muttering by his lonesome out in a dingy hallway. The camera stays put while Mac — improvising, no doubt, and fruitfully — argues with his ex-partner as though he were still within earshot. It’s not much, but the laughs build and you realize that Mac is pulling them out of some unseen top hat.
Too much of Soul Men relies on violent, bone-crunching slapstick and Viagra jokes, and Jennifer Coolidge taking out her false teeth before jumping Mac’s bones. It’s basically a road movie, with Louis and Floyd driving and arguing and reconciling and arguing cross-country, performing practice gigs along the way. The music certainly helps, and even though the stars don’t do all their own dancing, the vocals, apparently, are theirs. And they’re fun. They’re having fun, and the fun translates when the script loosens its straps. Mac and Jackson transcend this hopped-up version of The Sunshine Boys, this Grumpy Old Soul Men, and when Mac lets loose with that fantastic little laugh of his — the one that sounds like an electric mower starting up — you forget all the junk.
The pluses also include Sharon Leal, lately seen in Dreamgirls, as Cleo, the Tulsa daughter of the guys’ uneasily shared ex. Cleo’s abusive, drug-dealing, hip-hop wannabe lover is played by Affion Crockett, in a very broad style, halfway to egregious stereotype. The director, Malcolm D. Lee, has done fizzier work in the past, at least in the underrated comedy Roll Bounce, but despite some of the cruddiest lighting since What Happens in Vegas (shot by the same cinematographer, Matthew Leonetti), the movie bumps along, and by the time it gets to the (fake) Apollo for the big concert, you’re sort of with it. An unexpectedly good scene arrives very late, involving Mac, Jackson and the deceased tribute honoree, and the end credits are devoted to a tribute to Mac, complete with interview footage, along with an ancillary tribute to Isaac Hayes, who takes a supporting role as himself in Soul Men. Hayes died one day after Mac did, in August. They deserved a terrific send-off, and this one’s only fair, but it has its low-down wiles and its moments.
—MCT
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