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Love the Coopers: Mini-review

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Ed Helms

Ed Helms adds to his string of mediocre comedies

CChristmas movies are like Christmas fruitcakes; most of them are stuffed with overly sweet contents that really have no business being in the same film or dessert. Love the Coopers is a prime example. Its dysfunctional family members seem drawn from about a dozen different sitcoms, many of them bad, but the audience knows right away that the Christmas spirit will eventually solve all their problems.

For starters, Charlotte (Diane Keaton) and Sam (John Goodman) Cooper, who are hosting their annual Christmas Eve dinner, plan to tell their family they are divorcing after forty years of marriage. Son Hank (Ed Helms) can’t tell his family he’s out of work, and daughter Eleanor (Olivia Wilde) is so desperate to avoid confronting her folks that she asks a soldier (Jake Lacy) she meets at the airport to pose as her boyfriend. At least, they’re at the dinner; Charlotte’s sister Emma (Marisa Tomei) has been arrested for shoplifting and might spend the night in the slammer.

As in most films with multiple storylines, some of the subplots in Love the Coopers are better than others. Olivia Wilde does an excellent job in limited screen time of creating a believable, albeit confused, character, and the dialogue in her scenes with Jake Lacy sparkles. I could have easily watched an entire movie about the two of them. In addition, Charlotte’s father Bucky (Alan Arkin) has an unusual, hard-to-pin-down friendship with a much younger waitress (Amanda Seyfried) at the diner the retired teacher frequents. The relationship intriguingly wavers between physical longing and a substitute father/daughter bond. Their scenes provide what little real drama Love the Coopers has. Unfortunately, the film devotes the largest amount of screen time to the completely unbelievable friction between Charlotte and Sam. Their pending breakup results from the type of argument that exists only in movies as a plot device to enable a happy reconciliation. That’s not the only manufactured conflict in Coopers; by 2015, parents unwilling to admit they’re out of work is an equally tiresome device. Add to that bouts of PG-13 profanity and inappropriate flatulence from children and old people, and the enjoyable parts of Love the Coopers become hard to find. Fortunately, this movie has opened in early November, so it’s unlikely to be in theaters at a time when it can spoil a real family’s Christmas. at the movies 
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Ted 2: Mini-review

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Mark Wahlberg

Fortunately for Mark Wahlberg, Ted wasn’t at this photo shoot

B-Comedy is often in the eye or ear of the beholder, and few comedies are as beholder-driven as Ted 2. If you find crude sex jokes hilarious and oddball riffs on pop culture references cleverly amusing, Ted 2 is your type of movie. However, if you find the former disgusting and the latter befuddling, then watching this movie may seem the longest two hours of your life.

Ted 2 continues the adventures of the potty-mouthed and pot-headed teddy bear (voiced by Seth MacFarlane) and his equally potty-mouthed and pot-headed, but somewhat denser human best friend John (Mark Wahlberg). Ted is now married to girlfriend Tammy Lynn (Jessica Barth), but their plans to start a family hit a snag when the State of Massachusetts figures out that Ted is actually a teddy bear and begins legal proceedings to have him declared property rather than human. The only attorney willing to take on Ted’s case is novice Samantha L. Jackson (Amanda Seyfried). Fortunately for the guys, she’s clueless about pop references, including her name (thus a good straight gal for Ted’s jokes) and, well, Amanda Seyfried (thus a good more than straight gal for John’s long dormant love life). 

Ted 2 has a more involved story line than its predecessor, but it still finds the time to go off on extended tangents, including an overly long chase sequence set at Comic-Con that allows writer/director MacFarlane free rein to include as many pop culture jokes as possible. When Ted 2 is funny, which is slightly more than half the time, it’s often hilarious, such as a routine in which Ted and John heckle an improv comedy club troupe by suggesting they make jokes about 9/11. However, the parts that don’t work often go on way too long and, since the entire movie is in poor taste, can become quite grating. The best scene in the film, ironically, could be found in a Disney movie, a title sequence played completely straight featuring a massive production number straight out of a 30’s Busby Berkeley musical. Your liking and, more particularly, your tolerance for Ted 2 will depend on your reaction to Seth MacFarlane humor in general. The novelty factor of a walking talking teddy bear with a gutter mouth is gone, but MacFarlane’s imagination, which finds its way, for good or bad, pretty much unfiltered to the screen, still makes a bear of an impact.
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While We’re Young: Mini-Review

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Ben Stiller

Ben Stiller taps into middle age angst in While We’re Young

BSatchel Paige, who played major league baseball well into his 40’s, once famously said, “Don’t look back. Something might be gaining on you.” At the start of Noah Baumbach‘s insightful new comedy, While We’re Young, Josh (Ben Stiller) and Cornelia (Naomi Watts) Srebnick do look back and find that middle age is gaining on them faster than they’d care to admit. The only question is what they’re going to do about it.

The problem is a bit more telling for Josh, since he’s a documentary producer with one critical success quite a few years back and a current project that’s not finished despite his continuing to work on it for ten years. However, they both feel something is missing in their lives but find what they think is the answer in a friendship with Jamie (Adam Driver) and Darby (Amanda Seyfried) a mid-20’s couple who enjoy spending time with them despite the age and culture difference. However, this Fountain of Youth is fleeting, as Josh eventually realizes that Jamie is using the older couple as a stepping stone in his own filmmaking career.

While We’re Young marks a welcome return to form for both Stiller and Baumbach, both of whose careers bear certain resemblances to that of the fictional Josh. Stiller is vulnerable, not annoying here, and Baumbach has filled the movie with clever cultural and generational observations. A sequence in which Josh and Cornelia attend a New Age session that involves throwing up in a communal bucket is the funniest in the film. While We’re Young is also, almost by default, a welcome return for Charles Grodin, too seldom seen in recent years, who steals the film as Josh’s disapproving father-in-law who finds Jamie much more of a kindred spirit. The movie rambles on somewhat in its last 20 minutes, as if Baumbach couldn’t figure out just what points he wanted to make, but it closes on an appropriately sweet note. While We’re Young is an entertaining, insightful film to see for both the young and not-so-young.  
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