The Answer Man

First Hit: As the credits rolled at the end of the film, I realized I had really enjoyed it despite its obvious flaws.

Jeff Daniels plays Arlen Faber a lonely critical curmudgeon who, twenty years earlier, wrote a spiritual self-help bestseller called “God and Me”.

In his current situation he refuses to respond to letters, denies he’s Arlen Faber, and holes up in his house for days on end because of his own difficulty to be happy and seamlessly interface with life and the fame the book brought. In the book he wrote; Arlen posed questions to God and then provided answers which were purportedly received from God.

Arlen became known as the “The Answer Man” because the answers to the questions were so profound to the average person which is what caused his book to become a best seller. 

The film doesn't go into how he got to the state of needing to write the questions, let alone how he came to the answers. What we do know is that his father died 5 years before the film begins and he was very close to him, and he doesn’t have a connection with God. We know the latter because he’s shown going to churches asking for guidance by speaking and looking into the empty halls and ceilings, he shown reading spiritual books which are piled up everywhere in his house, we see him listening different spiritual CDs, and is shown doing different meditations and yoga poses.

Arlen also has a bad back and because of this, he seeks help from Elizabeth (played by Heather Graham) a healer and Doctor of Chiropractic. Her son, Alex (played by Max Antisell), is being overly protected by Elizabeth because of her own fearful reasons. When these two meet, a shift happens for them and others who are connected to each of them.

John Hindman wrote and directed this screenplay. Although the concept is good, I think more could have been done to create deeper and more interesting characters. Because of this, the film jumps from section to section with both extraneous scenes (If you see the film think of the mailman and his family and multiple shots of him lying on the floor with bad back) and scenes not developed enough (More about his relationship with his father and more about why he wrote the book - what drove him). Daniels, to his credit, was good and at times did more with the character than what was probably in the script. Graham was good and very engaging as was Antisell as her son and Olivia Thirlby as Graham’s receptionist Anne.

Overall: I liked the concept and most of the acting and was drawn to the subject matter. However, the screenplay needed to be rethought and enhanced along with stronger direction to make this a more powerful film.

The Hangover

First Hit: A very funny film in spite of the subject.

There is nothing funny about a hangover. It has been many, many years since I’ve had one and don’t ever anticipate having one again; especially like the one portrayed in this very funny film.

The film begins with a wedding location being set up outside the bride’s home. The bride, Tracy Garner, (played by Sasha Barrese) is fretting and worried because she has not heard from her groom Doug Billings (played by Justin Bartha) in two days. Tracy receives a phone call from her groom’s best friend Phil Wenneck (played by Bradley Cooper), who has a cut lip, is unshaven and looks like he’s been up all night. She asks him where Doug is and his confessional response is “we’ve lost him”.

The film then reels back in time to two days before the wedding and the four guys take off for two days in Las Vegas for a bachelor party. The bride’s brother Alan (Zach Galifianakis) is a bit touched and Doug’s dentist friend Stu Price (played by Ed Helms) makes up the gang of four.

Alan buys some Rohypnol (Roofies aka date rape drug) thinking he’s buying Ecstasy and he, unknowingly to the others, spikes their initial toast with it. The next scene is their trashed out Las Vegas hotel room, complete with a live tiger in the bathroom, Stu has a tooth missing, no one can remember anything, and they can’t find the groom.

The middle part of the film is spent trying to find out what happened and locating Doug. Eventually they find Doug, get him back for wedding (sunburned and haggard) but none of them really knows what happened during the fateful night.

As the wedding reception winds down, Alan finds their camera which was in the car they had in Vegas. They smile look at each other, and they make a pack to look at the pictures once, together, and then destroy the evidence.

The film was clever in that only until the end did you get an idea of what actually happened that fateful night, and only in still pictures which allows the audience to continue to imagine and speculate. The direction from that aspect was very good. The acting was good and I thought Galifianakis, playing a troubled brother of the bride, was the best acted character. Heather Graham playing Jade, an exotic dancer, who befriended Stu was sweet.

Overall: This was not a great film and it was a very funny film which stayed with me after I left the theater. I was surprised at how often I laughed out loud as did the audience I was sitting with. It also created a level of suspense, of what happened in Las Vegas, which continued until the very end and even today, 4 days later.