One Part Charm, One Part Boredom
ENOUGH
SAID is a love story laced with gentle humor. It might well have been
ordinary in other hands, but James Gandolfini and Julia Louis-Dreyfus make it
sing. Gandolfini, in his final performance, is so quietly expressive he becomes
the focus of the film. This big bear of a man can convey hurt or sadness with
the slightest shift of an eyebrow, and when his face shows new delight in his
unexpected good luck, we want to hug him ourselves.
Eva
(Louis-Dreyfus)) is about to lose her daughter to college, a particular dilemma
for this divorced mom facing the empty nest. At a party where she feels
supremely uncomfortable, she meets Albert (Gandolfini), a divorced dad whose
daughter is also leaving home. Although she continues firing awkward comments
into the conversation, Eva begins to feel comfortable with Albert.
By day a
masseuse, Eva becomes friends with new client Marianne (Catherine Keener), a
poet and survivor of a difficult divorce of her own who spends her table time
complaining about her ex-husband. There’s relevance there, and Eva and Albert
will grapple with the life questions that writer/director Nicole Holofeener
scatters on their path. Look for a few sub-plots, mild complications, and lots
of tender charm.
BAD
GRANDPA asks us to remember the time when boys we knew in 4th grade
started making jokes about body parts and functions. Most boys pass quickly and
mercifully through this passage to slightly more sophisticated humor but, alas,
some never make the leap. Such a one is actor Johnny Knoxville who, wrapped in
unwarranted self-confidence, believes his pedestrian mindset has the makings of
a full length feature film. Before I tell you why I think he’s wrong about that,
let me say that his movie has taken in $60,000,000 at the box office, still
counting, since it opened.
The make-up
artists have turned Johnny Knoxville from his 40-something self into an 86
year-old grump. This foul-minded man is about to undertake a road trip to
deliver his young grandson to the boy’s drunken, drug addicted father in North
Carolina. Irving (Knoxville) spins a running commentary of stupid jokes,
allusions and chatter designed to shock the innocent bystanders they run into in
nightclubs, bordellos and other places equally inappropriate for Billy (Jackson
Nicoll).
If you are of
a certain age, you will remember Alan Funt turning his Candid Camera on
unsuspecting citizens on early television. That’s what Johnny Knoxville does
here, but it’s out of sync with the culture we live in now. Nothing he does can
keep this awful movie from falling flat. I did laugh once - out loud actually
and quite inexplicably - in the very beginning when Irving got a body part
caught in a vending machine. If your own humor is that juvenile, by all means go
to Bad Grandpa and add a few more dollars to their take. If not, be
assured this is a road trip to unendurable boredom.
Film title : Enough Said
& Bad Grandpa
Distributor : Fox Searchlight, 20th Century Fox & MTV Films
Running Time : 1:33 & 1:32
Word Count : 496
Rating : PG-13 & R
Copyright (c) Illusion