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A
Truly Great American Satire? Only In Your Dreamz Much has been made of the upcoming movies concerning 9/11—the film about Flight 93 and Oliver Stone’s World Trade Center epic—but nobody seems to be harping on Paul Weitz’ American Dreamz. I find this strange since a major part of the film involves “funny” terrorists. I don’t know if America is ready to laugh at a bumbling Al-Qaeda wannabe who comes to America and becomes a front-runner on television’s number-one talent search program. I wasn’t ready to laugh, but I was not offended either. And that’s the main problem I have with American Dreamz. The movie is positioned as a satire, but it lacks the bite of Dr. Strangelove or Network. It could be classified as a spoof movie, but the actors are so good at making their characters three-dimensional it seems unfair to lump it in with the detached tomfoolery of Airplane! and its countless imitators. This movie is more like an uneasy marriage of the smart comedies Weitz has been making lately—About a Boy and In Good Company—and the moderate outrageousness of his claim to fame, American Pie. Despite the film’s shortcomings, Weitz must be a nice guy to work for. Boy’s Hugh Grant is effectively smarmy as the famous-for-being-famous TV host, while Company’s Dennis Quaid appears as a president who is more than a little derivative of George W. Bush. Chris Klein and Jennifer Coolidge, both from American Pie, are on hand as the boyfriend and mother of Dreamz’s poor white trash frontrunner. Mandy Moore, a welcome newcomer to the Weitz company of players, plays that character. I’m no fan of American Idol or the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but useless TV reality shows and Dubya seem like easy targets. That this film is able to generate some belly laughs from such done-to-death subject matter is inspiring. Quaid in particular refuses to turn his Prez character into a stumblebum. I’m not sure what Willem Dafoe is trying to pull with his Dick Cheney look, but he gets some of the movie’s wittier lines. After the Prez stops taking his “happy pills” and begins to devour every newspaper he can get his hands on, he confronts his Chief of Staff: “North Korea and Iran are not like Magneto and Doctor Octopus!” and the Dafoe character responds, “You don’t like cartoons? We’ll stop doing cartoons.” Marcia Gay Harden doesn’t have much to do in the first lady role, but the Academy Award winner gives the movie some class. The relatively unknown actors who portray terrorist turned glorified karaoke singer Omar and his housemates are quite good. Weitz appears to have put some real effort into his portrayal of the Arab-American family as SUV-driving, affluent mallrats. Perhaps a whole movie about this family minus the spotty satire would have worked better. The musical montage of Dreamz contestants is dead-on, with some deliberately inane—and hilarious—original songs. (Some of these are reprised, to lesser comic effect, over the closing credits.) American Dreamz climaxes with a big final episode involving Quaid’s commander-in-chief as guest judge, a terrorist plot, a betrayal of extraordinary magnitude, and one of the least satisfying endings in recent movie history. The laughs are here, but even with so few balls in the air, Weitz manages to drop a few of them. Consider how much absurdity goes on in this country every day and ask yourself why the writer-director didn’t take on Fox News, the Department of Homeland Security, or the ineffectiveness of Quaid’s political rivals. Bottom Line:
Watered-down satire slightly redeemed by a steady flow of laughs. |
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Friends
with Money: To Earn and Spend in L.A.
This film addresses the discomfort disparities in finances can create, especially among friends where the “politics and religion” boundaries of polite conversation don’t exist. While most people will probably relate to Jennifer Aniston’s character, a teacher-turned-maid who is trying to scrape by and find her way financially and romantically, director and writer Nicole Holofcener manages to make the more affluent and settled of this circle of friends just as realistic and sympathetic. Frances McDormand, Joan Cusack, Catherine Keener, and Aniston are the center of this ensemble cast, portraying four friends who have known each other for so long, it’s not clear if they stay in each others’ lives out of love or out of habit. McDormand, Cusack, and Keener are the friends with money; Aniston is the one without. Yet while Aniston lives in pot-smoking, job-shifting purgatory, the others aren’t doing so well either, despite their prosperity. McDormand has plunged into a world-hating depression that manifests itself as hostility toward any perceived slight, such as a stolen parking space. Keener is in the middle of a terrible marriage living out its last throes amid expensive and controversial house additions. Cusack decides where she should donate the $2 million dollars she and her husband have isolated for philanthropic purposes and tries to share her independently wealthy life with her friends in a way that doesn’t make them feel uncomfortable. This film isn’t so much a story as a series of observations. Most of the storylines aren’t tidily resolved. However, the actresses are fine enough to watch, and their characters’ lives so interesting, that the lack of a clear A-to-B arc doesn’t make much of a difference. Small gems, like Cusack playing a calm, understated part for the first time in a while, or Scott Caan’s candid, unleavened performance as a total scumbag, make the journey even more engrossing. At the end, while there’s no obvious conclusion, things have moved or improved just enough to feel satisfying. Do some friendships have expiration dates? Can relationships survive when so much has changed, leaving the parties involved in entirely different strata of society? It’s more likely the film will reinforce how you feel about these things rather than change your mind, but viewing friendships sustained partially through inertia is sobering whatever your opinions may be. While Friends with Money is often very funny, it’s never in a lightweight, slapstick way that compromises the truth and dignity of the characters. Every joke is pulled from the absurdity and angst populating the lives of most of the characters—from stone-faced, befuddled reactions to the ridiculous but believable situations they’re confronted with—instead of mugging and pratfalls. Even an ongoing joke about how everyone believes McDormand’s husband is gay is treated in a low-key, respectful way, and the mannerisms that Simon McBurney’s character exhibits to create such suspicion are gentle, ambiguous, and plausible. In the end, while it’s not an earth-shaking treatise on class struggles in modern American society, Friends with Money touches just enough on the subject to make anyone who has struggled with social inequities uncomfortable, while keeping a delicate issue entertaining for anyone who’d prefer not to be faced with what’s an unfortunate common reality. Bottom line: A light touch on a tough matter |
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