Movie Review: The Jungle Book (2016)

Rating: B/ I guess I’ll start of by saying I have no particular affinity with the 1967 animated  version of this movie; I’m not even sure I ever saw it, though I suspect I must have at some point. Having no memory of the animated film and having never read the book by Rudyard Kipling, I had no sentimental bias holding me back from liking this CGI-filled, celebrity voice actor- starring remake. It’s sometimes hard to let go of your nostalgic feelings for an original, but I had none of those going into this film. I think that’s very important; obviously this is going to be a very different animal from the animated original, and if you go in with hard feelings towards this movie and remakes in general you’re not going to enjoy it much.

The Road Within (2014)

So, I did the unthinkable last night, I watched a remake of a foreign movie before viewing the original. The Road Within is a remake of the 2010 German film, Vincent Wants to Sea, and I’ve heard it is a very faithful adaptation. Anyway, if that is the case, I might as well cross Vincent off my itinerary. The Road Within may be an independent film, but it feels as pedestrian as they come.

Let’s cut to the chase; the real problem here isn’t the script (trite and hokey as it is,) but Dev Patel. Fucking Dev Patel, man, Robert Sheehan plays Vincent, a Tourette’s Syndrome victim with a anger management problem in this movie, and he’s quite good. He’s making a monumental effort against a weak script with his solid performance.

Following his alcoholic mother’s death, Vincent is sent to a behavioral therapy program by his cold-hearted  politician father (Robert Patrick) and so sooner has he been dropped off and virtually abandoned by pops he befriends a flirty pixyish anorexic (Zoe Kravitz) and hits the road in his therapist’s stolen car to scatter his  mother’s ashes at sea.

Of course there’s one small problem, besides that whole ‘wanted felons in a stolen car’ thing. Vincent and the Anorexic, Marie have taken Vincent’s annoying roommate, Alex (Dev Patel) with them, quite forcibly (to prevent him from narcing them out to the doctors at the facility,) and that’s where the film really falters.

Don’t watch this if you’re an Obsessive-compulsive Disorder victim like me; it will just infuriate and baffle you. Alex is a pedantic clean freak who suffers from OCD, and that’s where the filmmaker’s development of his character ends. His character more often than not provides some kind of ghastly slapstick, his eyes bulging out like a deranged Marty Feldman incarnate, jumping about comically like a spastic and screaming about ‘poo’ and ‘contamination’ whenever someone touches him.

It’s pretty much the tackiest OCD stereotype one can imagine, and I felt almost embarrassed for the actor and the filmmaker in that (a they treated a complex and serious illness this way and (b that they thought people with OCD actually act like this. While Sheehan’s part is underwritten and pretty cliche as far as depictions of Tourette’s Syndrome go (choosing to portray the uncontrollable cursing that sometimes- but not typically- goes with the illness,) his character is written with some finesse and sympathy, and the actor creates a somewhat likable protagonist with admittedly limited resources. He seems, more or less, like someone who could exist in the real world.

Contrary to this movie’s depiction of OCD, people suffering from the illness are not psychotic or retarded (we may in fact be borderline crazy, if ‘insanity’ is defined by having an unfortunate mental condition that hinders our day-to-day functioning, but I desist.) The director, Gren Wells, could just as well have hired Adam Sandler (Happy Madison productions Sandler, not Punch-Drunk Love Sandler) to play Alex and it probably would have been just as convincing a portrayal. Patel’s shtick gets old fast, and by fast I mean the minute he’s introduced into the movie.

Besides the unfortunate depiction of certain psychological conditions, the setup of The Road Within is painfully standard, with characters apparently reaching recovery from a healing road trip and lots and lots of big discussions about the trio’s illnesses effect on their lives. Robert Patrick does a good job (and actually has a touching monologue near the end) but his character is just too unbelievable, going full circle from uncaring jerk to genuinely loving dad thanks to a few short conversations with Vincent’s shrink (Kyra Sedgwick.) The transformation just isn’t plausible with you consider the father, Robert’s years of being a total asshole to his son.

It all ties into a neat tidy bundle at the end and despite some good scenes and performances, ultimately has little to say about the character’s conditions. Comedies, whether convivial or dark, about mental illness can be effective; just look at Benny & Joon, The Silver Linings Playbook, and The bizarro black comedy The Voices. The Voices was offensive as offensive can be, but it didn’t try to be anything other than a pitch black comedy. The Silver Linings Playbook performed the high wire act between being light and funny and not trivializing the characters’ illnesses. The Road Within has it’s moments, but ultimately it’s just not a substantial flick, obtaining cheap laughs from the character’s  respective maladies and telling a well-meaning yet tired story with no real surprises.

The Last House on the Left (2009)

The way I see it, the remake of “The Last House on the Left” is a very small premise stretched to fit a reasonably long running time, without the smarts that these kind of movies need to avoid being underwhelming. The build-up to the inevitable rape scene took forever, followed by a long and excessively gruesome rape and a monotonous series of revenge killings. The saving grace of the movie was the acting, which was better than you might expect. All the actors, Goldwyn, Paxton, Paul, and Co-. gave perfectly acceptable performances. The movie itself, however, was gory and exploitive without having much of a message or brain at all.

The plot is mind-bogglingly simple, but could have been effective in a smarter movie- John (Tony Goldwyn) and Emma (Monica Potter) take their attractive, all-American daughter Mari (Sara Paxton) into their summer house in the woods. John and Emma decide to have a nice candlelit dinner while Mari takes the car and meets a friend, Paige (Martha McIsaac.) Paige decides to procure some pot from a dodgy shoplifter (Spencer Treat Clark) and Mari reluctantly goes along with it, against her own better judgment.

They meet the guy at a remote cabin and are interrupted by a group of killers on the lam, who assault Mari and leave her for dead with a bullet in her back. Then the miscreants seek refuge from the storm in the home of Mari’s unassuming parents. Needless to say, the word gets out, and, well, let the bloodletting begin. “The Last House on the Left” stares into our hearts with blackened eyes and dares us to say we would do anything different- to protect our family, our pack, from unimaginable evil. However, its message ends there. Unless you have your heart set on seeing a brutal rape of a crying, pleading girl, you’re better off watching “Dead Man’s Shoes” for a thriller on the consequences of revenge.

The trouble with this movie is not just the gape-mouthed simplicity of the plot, but the fact that the ensuing revenge is almost cartoonish in execution. “You wanna know what I did to your daughter?” the ringleader of the thugs, Krug (Garret Dillahunt,) growls at a desperate husband and father. I think anyone is capable of revenge, so really, in all my cynicism, I am the perfect audience for this movie.

But without the integrity nor the insight to pull this one off, the movie rubs our faces in its grim vision like a dog in shit. I don’t know what it takes us for more, sadists or masochists. The choice for last scene ( a borderline ludicrous sequence involving a microwave oven used in a unconventional manner) shows us where the film’s heart really lies- not in redemption but in ugliness and brutality.

“Breaking Bad”‘s Aaron Paul is in it too, going on in in full creeper mode, and guess what? He’s good. He’s likely to ruin Jesse Pinkman for you for a while afterward, not that Jesse was any boy scout, mind you. They’re all good, but it’s all for naught.”The Last House on the Left” is like a hulking, simple-minded cousin who hugs you a little too close  and hard, and doesn’t seem to comprehend that you’re, y’know, family. You don’t want to decline his embrace in the spirit of kinship (or, in the case of LHOTL, you don’t want to harshly criticize the movie, in the spirit of trying to appreciate a well-acted horror film,) but like a lecherous hug from Mongo, there’s more ick than appeal.

Maniac (2012)

Admittedly, I have never seen the 1980 original of “Maniac,” and just recently became interested in the remake,  which, for all it’s guts and gore, turns out to be a pretty decent psychological slasher movie. Physically Elijah Wood isn’t a great stand-in for the apparently imposing, plain Joe Spinell but he still manages to turn in a good (if slightly over-acted) performance as the lead psycho. Frodo ain’t here Mrs. Torrance.

Frank Zito is a disturbed, slightly stereotypical nutjob (hmm, a sexually repressed loner with mommy issues… just dress him up in a wig and a dress and call him Norman) whose Mama liked to whore around in front of her impressionable son. This has left him with some issues with members of the fairer sex, and Frank acts out by killing and scalping attractive women. Did I mention Frank owns a mannequin shop? Creepy stuff for sure. At least Frank finds a way that all those scalps aren’t wasted.

Then the unthinkable happens. Pale creeper Frank finds a girl, Anna (Nora Arnezeder) who makes him rethink his creeper life. She’s smart, pretty, and she, y’know, GETS him- an attribute that’s in short supply if you’re a psycho killer with a fetish for scalps. She even seems to like his mannequins even more than she likes him, and this makes Frank’s heart flutter with something unexpected- love, caring, a yearning for a different way of life.

Anna muses that the mannequins are beautifully unique and seem to have distinct personalities (no, she’s not crazy.) Her soft, gentle manner draws out tentative Frank- but how long can Frank keep up his facade? And it soon becomes obvious that Frank’s mask of sanity is about to slip (to borrow a all-too-overt reference to “American Psycho.”) Will Anna be repulsed when she finds out Frank’s true self?

The movie adopts the disturbing stylistic approach of forcing us to watch the crimes from Frank’s POV. Not only does that bring up all kinds of moral and ethical questions (is our fascination with violence and serial killers cathartic, or rather voyeuristic and exploitative?), it occasionally makes the killings uncomfortably sexualized, marked by Frank’s repressed libido and misogynistic rage.

I understand what the filmmaker is trying to do, but it is disturbing to watch a woman’s breasts while she is strangled. Then again, doesn’t the fact that the strangling doesn’t bother me speak volumes on Americans over-familiarity with violence and carnage? Maybe that’s what this movie is trying to say.

Frank spends a lot of time looking in mirrors, which may portray his fracturing personality (he often argues and pleads with his ‘darker half,’ which takes over when she gets the urge to kill) or it might just be there to remind us “yep, it’s Elijah Wood playing the killer, not just a camera being toted around by the crew.”

On the surface, this film is fast-paced and exciting. The psychology behind the character of Frank is a little sketchy (somewhere between Norman Bates’ exclamation of “a boy’s best friend is his mother” and Philip Larkin’s poem that begins “They fuck you up your mum and dad…”) but the movie is mostly solid.

I actually think “Tony” by Gerard Johnson, a highly underregarded film and hell of an independent production, knocks this film on it’s ass. But “Maniac” is still a solidly acted way to pass the time. Take a date- but make sure they’re not TOO into it, or we might have of a”Maniac” on your hands. Think about it. Good afternoon, everyone, and enjoy the feature.