In Theaters: March 27, 2009

Reviews of Monsters vs. Aliens and Goodbye Solo

Monsters vs. Aliens
Directed by Rob Letterman and Conrad Vernon
Starring Reese Witherspoon, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett, Seth Rogen
***1/2

In the never-ending Pixar vs. DreamWorks Animation debate, I tend to come down on Pixar’s side.  Shrek vs. Toy Story?  Toy Story, easy. Madagascar vs. The Incredibles?  C’mon…The Incredibles, of course.  Shark Tale vs. Wall-E?  Don’t even bother asking.  Although movies like Kung Fu Panda and Over the Hedge have their moments, compared to the witty, daring and sophisticated animated features that Pixar puts out on an almost yearly basis, most DreamWorks productions look like…well, cartoons.

That said, with their newest feature, Monsters vs. Aliens, the DreamWorks guys have achieved something their rivals have yet to accomplish: they’ve built an entertaining adventure entirely around a female protagonist.  Pixar has created some memorable female characters over the years, including Dory from Finding Nemo, Elastigirl from The Incredibles and, most recently, EVE from Wall-E.  But as cool as all those women are, the central thrust of the story always concerns a male hero.  The female characters aren’t glorified window dressing, but they aren’t the stars of the show either.

That’s not the case with MvA, which puts girl power front and center in the form of Susan Murphy (voiced by Reese Witherspoon), an ordinary small-town woman who is transformed into a 50-foot-tall giantess following a freak encounter with a glowing meteorite.  No sooner has Susan grown as tall as a skyscraper than she’s captured by the army and thrown in a top-secret prison, where she’s informed she’ll spend the rest of her life under her new government name, Ginormica.  Also in lock-up are four other monsters, the human/cockroach hybrid Dr. Cockroach (Hugh Laurie), the amphibious bodybuilder The Missing Link (Will Arnett), the gelatinous B.O.B. (Seth Rogen) and the towering radioactive insect, Insectosaurus, hailing from—where else?—Tokyo.

After a month on the inside, Ginormica has all but given up hope of returning to her normal life and husband-to-be, vain weatherman Derek (Paul Rudd).  Then one afternoon, the monster squad is informed that their individual life sentences are being revoked.  There’s just one catch: they have to do battle with an invading alien probe that’s marching towards San Francisco.  And once that’s out of the way, Ginormica faces an even greater challenge—introducing her new friends to her family.

It took me two viewings to appreciate how effectively MvA handles Susan’s transformation from a naïve innocent into a strong, confident heroine.  Unlike her co-stars, Witherspoon doesn’t get to deliver a lot of crowd-pleasing gags, so it’s easy to lose sight of Susan during the first half of the film with such a funny supporting cast competing for your attention.  But then the San Francisco set-piece arrives and Ginormica takes charge.  It’s a delight to watch her discover the extent of her new powers and put them to the test.  In comic-book parlance, this would be described as the “birth of a superhero” sequence and you’d have to be Lex Luthor or The Green Goblin to not want to cheer her on.  Ginormica’s best moment, however, comes in a later scene when she proudly proclaims “I’m never going to sell myself short again!” while her male monster buddies shower her with applause and praise.  It’s a scene that should thrill all the young girls in the theater; I know that if I had a daughter, I’d want her to grow up to be Ginormica…although in attitude rather than height.

While the female empowerment aspect of MvA is worth celebrating, there are plenty of other things to like here as well.  The action sequences are superbly executed, the characters are wonderfully realized by the animators and the actors voicing them (Rogen’s well-meaning, but doltish B.O.B. is sure to be a particular favorite) and the numerous references to old-school monster flicks like Godzilla and The Blob will delight genre fans.  This is an example of a mainstream studio blockbuster done right—it effectively balances humor and action, as well as small character beats with big set-pieces.

As enjoyable as MvA is, I have to concede that it doesn’t measure up to Pixar’s best efforts.  (Although, given the choice between watching MvA or Ratatouille, I’d pick MvA without any hesitation.)  The truth is, we’ve been spoiled by films like Wall-E and Toy Story—to say nothing of such exceptional non-Pixar productions as Spirited Away and Coraline—which seek to both entertain and elevate animation as an art form.  MvA is purely interested in the first half of this equation.  It deserves praise for succeeding at what it sets out to do, but you might leave the theater wishing it had aspired to just a little bit more.

Verdict: See It

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Goodbye Solo
Directed by Ramin Bahrani
Starring Souleymane Sy Savane, Red West
***

Writer/director Ramin Bahrani is only a few years into his career as a feature filmmaker, but he’s already emerged as a critical darling thanks to his commitment to depicting settings and characters rarely glimpsed in mainstream Hollywood films.  His breakthrough feature Man Push Cart chronicled a few weeks in the life of one of the many push-cart vendors that populate the bustling streets of midtown Manhattan.  For his follow-up, Chop Shop, he rode the 7 train out to Willets Point, Queens, home of the so-called Iron Triangle, to tell the story of a young orphan trying to carve out a living as a “freelance” employee for a small-time auto repair shop.  Even though both movies have their flaws (which include some overbearing symbolism in Man Push Cart and a few too many dramatic contrivances in Chop Shop) they are fascinating glimpses into areas of New York that even the city’s natives rarely tread.

Bahrani’s latest film Goodbye Solo takes him back to his hometown, Winston-Salem, North Carolina and, once again, he keeps his camera trained on the faces and places that don’t appear in the tourist brochures.  Our guide to this part of town is Solo (Souleymane Sy Savane) a friendly, outgoing Senegalese taxi driver with dreams of trading in his taxi license for a flight attendant’s uniform.  As the movie opens, Solo is in mid-conversation with a new passenger, a cranky old man named William (Red West), who has just pitched him a strange proposition.  In a few weeks’ time, Solo will drive William to a windy mountaintop at nearby Blowing Rock National Park, drop him off and drive away, no questions asked.  For this service, he’ll be paid $1000, a hefty sum for a man who has an extended family to support back in Senegal as well as a pregnant wife and stepdaughter at home.

Recognizing immediately what William intends to do, Solo decides on the spot to become the man’s best friend.  Calling himself William’s “personal driver,” he invites his new buddy home to sleep on his couch, then finds him a motel room after his wife objects and even moves in to live with him, all in an effort to learn why he wants to take his one-way trip to Blowing Rock.  Perhaps out of simple resignation or sheer loneliness, William allows Solo into his life for a time, but pulls back when the taxi driver probes too deeply into his mysterious past.  His fate is never in doubt—the only question is whether Solo will play his designated role in it.

Like Man Push Cart and Chop Shop, Goodbye Solo is filled with striking images; foregoing the shaky handheld aesthetic that defines so many independent productions, Bahrani favors carefully composed frames that treat the environment as an actual character in the film, along with the flesh and blood performers.  The film continues Bahrani’s habit of filling his casts with non-actors; in fact, West is the only member of this ensemble with any extensive acting experience.  His co-star is making his feature film debut here, after previously working as a model and, yes, a flight attendant.  Savane’s inexperience in front of the camera only helps the movie, though.  There’s no artifice to his performance or any suggestion that he’s portraying a life that’s unfamiliar to him.

While Goodbye Solo is an easy film to admire, I have to admit that it never really had me riveted.  For all of Bahrani’s considerable technical skills, I still sense a certain detachment from what’s going on in front of the camera, which results in movies that are never as engaging as I hope for them to be.  He’s well on the road to becoming a director on the level of Mike Leigh, who is similarly fascinated by individuals that exist outside of mainstream society.  The key difference between them (for now, at least) is that Leigh makes the viewer a full participant in his characters’ lives.  Bahrani keeps us at a distance, even when we’re eager to learn more about these people we’re spending 90-odd minutes with.  The good news is, Bahrani is refining his skills with each film, so it’s only a matter of time until he makes a movie that’s a dramatically rich as it is beautifully shot.

Verdict: See It