Movie Review: The Lookout (2007)

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Young TV actors have a tough time breaking out after their TV series ends. For every success story (Michael J. Fox, for example), there are countless others who toil in low-budget films or even ditch acting altogether (The entire cast of Saved by the Bell, for example). In the past few years, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is starting to show that he may be more Michael J. Fox than Saved By the Bell.

In The Lookout, Gordon-Levitt plays Chris Pratt, a once promising high school hockey player who now can only hold work as a janitor after a horrific car accident robs him of his ability to sequence events correctly and makes him blurt out inappropriate comments (such as telling someone he just met that he wants to see her naked). Pratt's inability to sequence events or remember the placement of objects is so bad that he can't even make his own dinner, and instead has to rely on his blind roommate, Lewis (Jeff Daniels).

Pratt's life is changed, however, when he meets Gary Spargo (Matthew Goode), who claims to have gone to the same high school as Pratt. Preying on Pratt's inability to perceive events correctly and his anger towards his father's view of Pratt as a lost cause, Spargo enlists Pratt as the lookout man for an upcoming bank robbery that he's planning.

The Lookout relies heavily on the performance of its actors, and in that aspect it does not disappoint. Gordon-Levitt plays Pratt well, generating genuine affection for the character and pulling off the consequences of his brain injury admirably. Daniels and Goode both play their characters to the best of their abilities, although the script doesn't allow for too many multi-dimensional characters besides Chris Pratt.

The story, however, is fairly straightforward and littered with obvious holes, something atypical of writer Scott Frank (Get Shorty, Out of Sight), who makes his directorial debut with The Lookout. Nothing comes as a surprise throughout the story's run, and the ending is disappointing at best. In addition, the female characters (including the main love interest, played by Isla Fisher) are almost completely inessential to the plot, and some characters seem to come and go without any real rhyme or reason. One character even disappears with about half an hour left in the movie and never returns. Their absence is not adequately explained, and constitutes possibly the largest plot gaff that I saw.

The Lookout performed somewhat poorly in the box office, which is a shame, for despite the plot holes it was a moderately engaging movie with a lot of promise. Perhaps it could have been marketed better (the bank robbery that is implied to be the film's catalyst doesn't happen until near the end of the movie), or perhaps just a little bit more needed to be added to the movie, a few extra minutes to tie some loose ends together. As it is, The Lookout is a very good movie that missed out on the potential to be great.

Rating: 7/10

Movie Review: Passengers (2008)

Although it is arguable what exactly is needed to have a successful thriller, there is one thing that seems pretty obvious: Thrills. A thriller can be a lot of things, but if the words "suspenseful" and "thrilling" are not used, chances are good the movie failed as a thriller. Passengers, starring Anne Hathaway and Patrick Wilson, falls into the trap of not living up to it's genre namesake. Passengers is contrived, easy to figure out, and worst of all, boring.

Claire Summers (Hathaway) is a counselor who has been in school her whole life, but has never had the chance to practice what she's been taught. After a horrific plane crash, however, Claire's boss (Andre Baugher) decides it's time that she get some real world experience and provide group counseling to the survivors of the crash.

Things get off to a rocky start almost immediately. Most of the survivors spend their time in therapy arguing about the events of the crash, while Eric (Wilson) refuses to go to group meetings and instead suggests that Claire make a "house call." It becomes apparent very quickly that Eric much more interest in Claire than he has in getting therapy.

Unfortunately, Passengers goes nowhere with the premise, and instead settles into contrived situations and fails to build any realistic tension. The characters are almost universally unbelievable (Claire will go along with anything as long as you ask twice) and the ending twists are pretty easy to see coming a mere 10 minutes into the movie.

I'm not completely sure the director knew what direction to go with the script. He implements false scare tactics (Hathaway had to do her best to appear scared as a newspaper blowing in the wind accidentally hits her) and an ending that feels like it's from a completely different movie. In fact, the last five minutes of the movie have more tension and emotion in them than the ninety minutes combined.

It's pretty easy to see why Passengers didn't generate much buzz in limited theater release. Of all the things it did wrong, the absolute worst was that it was flat-out boring. Thrillers can get by with a mediocre script and an implausible premise if it manages to keep the suspense level up. When they don't, however, they end up failing miserably.

Rating: 4/10

Movie Review: Charlie Bartlett (2008)

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Cliche, stereotypical comedies come to major theaters around two dozen times a year, so what distinguishes Charlie Bartlett from the rest? Absolutely nothing.

Charlie Bartlett is a story about Charlie Bartlett (Anton Yelchin), a prep-school rich kid who so desperately wants to be popular that he'll do anything, regardless of legality, to achieve this popularity. After getting kicked out of the last in a long string of private schools, Charlie's mother (Hope Davis) decides to try Charlie out in public school.

At this new school, Charlie goes through a series of misadventures involving the principal (Robert Downey, Jr.), the principal's daughter (Kat Dennings), and the resident bully (Tyler Hilton). Everything that happens in the movie is unsurprising and follows the most basic "teen comedy" template. The story is derivative, the dialogue is derivative, and Charlie Bartlett has more random, inessential montages this side of an 80's sport flick.

Now, I've seen some bad comedies in the past that've been redeemed by the charisma/acting ability of the principal cast. In Charlie Bartlett, the only one who even approaches believable/entertaining acting is Downey, and even he is not able to muster even half of what he is capable of. Yelchin and Dennings seem to be in a battle through most of the movie to see who can sound more out of place, and in the end I think Dennings wins slightly, but maybe that's because Yelchin is on screen so much that I just got used to his awkwardness and never got used to Dennings'.

However, none of this marks the worst aspect of Charlie Bartlett, which is the inexcusable cover of Cat Stevens' "If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out." First off, Charlie Bartlett is not even on the same planet as the terrific Harold and Maude. Secondly, Kat Dennings' voice is so ill-equipped for singing that she single-handedly turns a pleasant song into an excruciating three-minutes of warbling.

Although not the absolute worst comedy I have ever seen, Charlie Bartlett is nonetheless a film that leaves me grasping at straws to find positive things to say and is one of the worst comedies to come out in the past few years.

Rating: 2/10