Grandma

First Hit:  Most of the time it was creatively funny and interesting while being topical.

Lily Tomlin (Plays Elle Reid – the grandmother) is in one of her finest moments as an actress. It allows both her acerbic and humorous qualities to exist in the same person while making sense.

Her granddaughter Sage (Julia Garner) arrives at her home looking for help. She’s young, pregnant and without the money she needs to have an abortion scheduled for later that day. Elle doesn’t have the money either and although Elle’s daughter and Sage’s mother Judy (Marcia Gay Harden) has money, neither want to ask her.

The story aims to help bridge this gap between grandmother, mother and daughter. Elle is also a lesbian and her live-in lover Olivia (Judy Greer) who is getting the boot early on in the film, provides another side of the story and the complexity of Elle’s life is slowly revealed as the movie unfolds.

Although complex, the story is also simple and gives the audience enough to think about as the story unfolds. This is one of the strong points of the film. Additionally, many of the shots of Sage and Elle driving in the vintage car are precious as was the interaction between Elle and her former husband Karl (Sam Elliot).

Tomlin is fantastic and makes the emotional wise role work well. Garner is a star in this film. She’s both angelic and vulnerable. Harden is strong in her small role. Greer’s perfect in her small and pivotal role. Elliot is absolutely divine as the former husband. Paul Weitz wrote and directed this insightful, funny, poignant film.

Overall:  This film has staying power after watching it.

Addmissions

First Hit:  This film felt disjointed, lacking depth in character development, with moments of laughter. A good romantic comedy is a wonderful and fun to watch. It is also one of the easier genres to do poorly. Despite having Tina Fey and Paul Rudd, two funny people who can make a romantic comedy work – it doesn’t work here. Yes there are very funny parts but they are few and far between. The failure here is that this film also wants to be taken seriously as a drama as well. The result is a film looking for a base/home genre and therefore lost. When Portia (Fey), who is a Princeton Admissions Director, is with her partner (living together for 10 years) Mark (Michael Sheen), the scenes were not believable. There is no way I bought that they even liked each other – let alone lived together for 10 years. In fact this whole part of the story and script could have been scrapped and the film would have worked. The basic premise is that Portia likes stability and not getting close to anyone. Rudd as John Pressman (a director in an alternative school) pushes for not being stable; he travels with his adopted son and lives in countries all over the world. Both of these people are rebelling against their parents. Portia’s mom Susannah (played by Lily Tomlin) is a rebel of society and stable life – she wants to push the envelope. Mrs. Pressman (Lisa Emery) is old school conservative money and her son John wants to be free and always keep moving. This could be enough for a romantic comedy, but then add Portia may have a son she’s never known and that Rudd might have to settle down – we mix too much drama and it fizzles.

Fey is occasionally good, but mostly neither funny nor dramatically interesting. Rudd is better as he doesn’t have as many hurdles to jump to make his role work. Travis Bratten (as Rudd’s adoptive son Nelson) is excellent. Nat Wolff is very good as a smart lost young man who wants to become part of something. Tomlin is good as Fey’s troubled and inspirational mother. Sheen was wasted in this role that wasn’t needed to make this film work. Karen Croner wrote an inadequate screen play that didn’t know what it wanted to be. Paul Weitz directed this an probably knew it was failing as he filmed and edited it together.

Overall:  Not really worth the money but there are enough laughs to want to watch this for free on a Sunday evening.

The Pink Pannther 2

First Hit: Better than Steve Martin’s first attempt at being Inspector Clouseau and although there are funny bits, it isn’t any better than the original Pink Panthers starring Peter Sellers.

I’m not sure why Steve Martin decided to do remakes of the Pink Panther series. Maybe it is because he admired Peter Sellers so much, I don’t know. Lord knows Martin has enough writing talent to create something better (“Shopgirl” or even better his play “Picasso at the Lapin Agile”), however he’s chosen to redo the Pink Panther films.

His first attempt was an obvious attempt to recreate Peter Sellers’ version of the character. However, in this attempt Steve is more relaxed and plays to his own strengths (the flamenco dance was perfect Martin). As Clouseau, he is part of “The Dream Team” of top police inspectors who work on big international cases. As soon as he leave France the Pink Panther diamond is stolen from a French museum.

Clouseau and the dream team then make attempts to solve the crime. Having a group of other good inspectors on the case helps this film and gives Martin foils to expand his type of humor.

Martin is much better and more relaxed as Clouseau in this film. The story line is expanded with the addition of Andy Garcia as Vicenzo, Alfred Molina as Pepperidge, and Yuki Matsuzaki as Kenji who make up “The Dream Team”. Garcia was funny as a suave inspector from Italy. Lily Tomlin played Mrs. Berenger an officer who helps officers be socially correct and on their best behavior. I couldn’t help but think this was an added on part to boost up the comedic aspects for Martin.

Overall: This film had some funny bits and was overall somewhat enjoyable but comes nowhere near the films he is complementing.