BOMBSHELL (US/Canada - 2019) Directed by Jay Roach. Written by Charles Randolph. Cast: Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman, Margot Robbie, John Lithgow, Allison Janney, Malcolm McDowell, Kate McKinnon, Connie Britton, Mark Duplass, Liv Hewson, Brigitte Lundy-Paine, Rob Delaney, Stephen Root, Robin Weigert, Amy Landecker, Mark Moses, Richard Kind, Holland Taylor, Alanna Ubach, Anne Ramsay, Andy Buckley, Brooke Smith, Ben Lawson, Josh Lawson, Nazanian Boniadi, Brian d'Arcy James, Alice Eve, Elisabeth Rohm, Bree Condon, Ashley Greene, Tricia Helfer, Jennifer Morrison, Lisa Canning, Ahna O'Reilly, John Rothman, Tony Plana, Kevin Dorff, P.J. Byrne, Spencer Garrett, Michael Buie, Marc Evan Jackson, Katie Aselton. (R, 109 mins)
A chronicle of the Fox News sexual harassment scandal that brought down chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, BOMBSHELL belongs to that same "ripped from the headlines" subgenre that gave us THE BIG SHORT and VICE, generally decent films that provide easy Oscar bait for big-name actors to do uncanny impressions of ubiquitous figures. BOMBSHELL is very much in line with those films, and could make an unofficial trilogy with director Jay Roach's two previous HBO political docudramas, 2008's RECOUNT and 2012's GAME CHANGE. Those were instant Emmy and Golden Globe magnets, with RECOUNT giving Laura Dern a chance to do a remarkable take on Florida Attorney General Katharine Harris, and GAME CHANGE showcasing Julianne Moore and Ed Harris as dead-on versions of Sarah Palin and John McCain, respectively. But because these stories are so recent and the 24-hour news cycle so constantly there and in our faces, BOMBSHELL falls into the same trap as the rest of these kinds of movies: it entertains but offers nothing that we don't already know. Given Roach's history with HBO, it's surprising that BOMBSHELL is even in theaters. It follows the same formula and style as RECOUNT and GAME CHANGE, eschewing the snarky smartassery that Adam McKay brought to THE BIG SHORT and VICE, opting instead for occasional fourth-wall breaking while generally keeping it straightforward and serious.
The Fox News scandal broke in 2016 and BOMBSHELL is already the second 2019 project to tackle Ailes as a subject, following the Showtime limited series THE LOUDEST VOICE, with Russell Crowe as Ailes and Naomi Watts as Gretchen Carlson, the fired Fox News personality who was the first to sue him for sexual harassment. THE LOUDEST VOICE was more about the entire Ailes story, starting with the establishment of Fox News, while BOMBSHELL just deals with the scandal, with the focus being on Megyn Kelly (Charlize Theron), who finds herself under fire as the film opens in 2015, just after her debate scuffle with Donald Trump that led to his infamous "blood coming out of her...wherever" comment. Ailes (John Lithgow, with prosthetic jowls and a NUTTY PROFESSOR fat suit) sympathizes with the way Trump supporters are raging at her on Twitter, but wants her to play nice, as Fox and Trump are well on their way to a perpetual state of symbiotic co-dependence. At the same time, Carlson (Nicole Kidman) is ruffling feathers on the afternoon dead zone she's been given after being bounced from the highly-rated morning show FOX & FRIENDS, and when she's eventually fired, she decides to blow the doors off the worst-kept secret in the building: that Ailes is a serial sexual harasser and all-around creep, and that the network's "boys club"--the costly harassment settlements of Bill O'Reilly (played here by Kevin Dorff) are unspoken common knowledge among the grunts in the newsroom--has made for a toxic work environment. The mood is also fueled by deranged, right-wing paranoia that comes straight from Ailes, who at one point makes an off-the-cuff remark to his legal team about an Obama White House plot to have him murdered, a comment so batshit crazy that even his attorney Rudy Giuliani (Richard Kind) is seen looking away in incredulous discomfort.
The third figure in the story is the most problematic in that she's a wholly fictional creation of Roach and screenwriter Charles Randolph (a co-writer of THE BIG SHORT). Margot Robbie is the improbably-named Kayla Pospisil, a composite character meant to show the kind of treatment given to established vets like Kelly and Carlson when they were ambitious youngsters at the network. Composite characters are very often a necessity with dramatic narrative recreations, and while it's no fault of Robbie's, the script just requires Kayla to be too many things at once. Ostensibly an "evangelical millennial" with a repressed upbringing in a staunchly far-right church family, Kayla is at Fox News to be a voice for young conservatives. She's first shown in a control booth, demonstrating no knowledge of the Eagles or classic rock in general when she puts a photo of Don Henley on the air to accompany a breaking news report on the death of Glenn Frey, blaming the gaffe on "never listening to secular music." The next time we see her, she's telling Carlson that she's leaving her staff to work for O'Reilly (wait...when was she on Carlson's staff in the first place?). Right after that, she's hopping into bed with a closeted lesbian cubicle mate (Kate McKinnon), who's a secret Hillary Clinton supporter. It's rightly disgusting and infuriating when we see ambitious Kayla requesting a meeting with Ailes and ending up being subjected to his degrading requests that she pull up her skirt for him, and the squirm-inducing scene is played very well by Robbie and Lithgow. But Robbie simply can't assemble a believable character out of the wildly disparate pieces she's been given.
Kidman has a good amount of screen time, but her story generally takes a backseat to what goes on with Robbie's Kayla and Theron's Megyn Kelly. Theron is definitely the MVP here, with just the right amount of subtle prosthetics combined with an astonishing mimicry of Kelly's voice, cadence, and speaking style. It's one of the most believable transformations of an actor into a real-life figure in recent memory. There's been some chatter online complaining that the film makes Kelly a hero, but that's another discussion for another time. No one deserves to be a victim of sexual harassment, and BOMBSHELL isn't about Megyn Kelly's dubious comments as a Fox News personality or during her short tenure at NBC. Briskly-paced and well-acted (except for the one scene between Theron and Robbie, which comes off as strangely clunky), with Theron and Lithgow being the standouts, BOMBSHELL also boasts a very large supporting cast, including Malcolm McDowell as Rupert Murdoch, Allison Janney as Ailes attorney Susan Estrich, Spencer Garrett as Sean Hannity, Tony Plana as Geraldo Rivera, a perfectly-cast Alanna Ubach as Judge Jeanine Pirro, Mark Moses as the loathsome Bill Shine, Anne Ramsay as Greta Van Susteren, Bree Condon as a Mean Girl-ish Kimberly Guilfoyle, P.J. Byrne as Neil Cavuto, and Connie Britton as Ailes' endlessly supportive wife, introduced scoffing at an employee for eating "liberal" grocery store sushi. Like RECOUNT, GAME CHANGE, THE BIG SHORT, and VICE, BOMBSHELL is perfectly fine entertainment and it'll almost certainly be up for major awards (Theron and Lithgow are both deserving). But once you get past the dedication and diligence of the performances, do these films have any lasting impact beyond that first viewing? THE BIG SHORT was great, but have I thought "I need to rewatch THE BIG SHORT" even once in the four years since I saw it in the theater?
While he pays the bills and makes a comfortable living in television directing episodes of shows like HAWAII FIVE-O and SALEM and has a ubiquitous, fan-friendly presence on the internet through the Trailers from Hell web site, it would be nice if Joe Dante could get better feature film offers as he enters his emeritus years. A distinguished graduate of the Roger Corman factory, the 68-year-old Dante made his name with cult classics like HOLLYWOOD BOULEVARD (1976), PIRANHA (1978) and THE HOWLING (1981) before making it to the majors with the Steven Spielberg-produced GREMLINS (1984) and EXPLORERS (1985), and later hits like THE 'BURBS (1989) and SMALL SOLDIERS (1998). Long-praised for his twisted and anarchic, Looney Tunes-inspired humor (most apparent in 1990's GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH), Dante found himself more or less blackballed after the colossal failure of 2003's LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION. Since then, he's made ends meet with TV--his politically-charged "Homecoming" was probably the best episode of Showtime's MASTERS OF HORROR--but for a beloved genre auteur, Dante's big-screen career is a shambles. He directed the wraparound segments of the dreadful anthology film TRAPPED ASHES (2008), and his 3-D '80s throwback THE HOLE (2012) was OK, but it took three years to find a distributor who only gave it very limited release. BURYING THE EX, Dante's latest attempt at a big-screen comeback, does nothing to add to his legacy. Scripted by Mark Trezza and expanded from Trezza's own 2008 short film, BURYING THE EX is yet another rom-zom-com in the vein of WARM BODIES and LIFE AFTER BETH, with a little ALL CHEERLEADERS DIE thrown in. It relies on raunch and grossout gags that are hardly Dante's milieu. Die-hards may cite the constant horror-fan shout-outs in BURYING THE EX--posters for Mario Bava's PLANET OF THE VAMPIRES and the Christopher Lee vampire comedy UNCLE WAS A VAMPIRE, several appearances by a 2012 issue of Video Watchdog, clips from movies like PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE, NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD, THE TERROR, THE WHIP AND THE BODY, THE SATANIC RITES OF DRACULA, and THE GORE GORE GIRLS, and a brief appearance by the legendary Dick Miller--as evidence that Dante's back, but in the context of the film, these elements feel like desperate cries for help, like he's doing anything he can think of to put some kind of personal stamp on this flop-sweat-soaked endeavor. At some point--maybe around the time a character is covered in projectile-vomited embalming fluid or when another brags about how he needs protein after he "busts a nut"--you forget how bad the movie is and just start feeling sorry for Dante. This guy made THE HOWLING. A garbage gig like this is far beneath him.
With ROBOT JOX-ish poster art reminiscent of Charles Band and Full Moon's VHS glory days and a structure that would seem to be in the wheelhouse of an in-his-prime Joe Dante, ROBOT OVERLORDS should be a lot of fun. Instead, it's a dull, downbeat dud that doesn't seem to know what audience it's pursuing. Set three years after an invasion of Earth by a race of alien robots who are constantly on patrol and keep humanity imprisoned in their own homes, ROBOT OVERLORDS follows three teenagers--Sean (Callan McAuliffe), his buddy Nathan (James Tarpey), and Nathan's sister Alexandra (Ella Hunt)--and orphaned neighbor boy Connor (Milo Parker), who accidentally discover that a jolt from a car battery temporarily disables the behind-the-ear tracking monitors that humans are now requires to wear. This allows them to set in motion a plot to take back Earth and overthrow the robot rulers, who are aided in their takeover of the planet by traitorous collaborators. One such collaborator is the loathsome Robin Smythe (Ben Kingsley), who only seems to be sucking up to the robots in order to give him leverage in his pursuit of Sean's mom Kate (Gillian Anderson), whose military officer husband (Steven Mackintosh) is missing and presumed dead. Directed and co-written by Jon Wright, whose TREMORS homage GRABBERS was an inspired and fun little monster movie, ROBOT OVERLORDS would seem to be aimed at kids but is too dark and violent for family audiences, and the longer it goes on, the more listless and generic it becomes. Kingsley, Anderson, and the younger actors are fine, but Wright fails to bring the energy and enthusiasm that made GRABBERS so enjoyable. You'd think it would be tough to make a movie called ROBOT OVERLORDS boring, but that's exactly the word to describe this barely-released misfire. (PG-13, 90 mins)
STATEN ISLAND SUMMER (US - 2015)
Probably the worst thing to come from the SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE camp since the 1985-86 brat-pack season that brought the show as close as it's ever been to cancellation, STATEN ISLAND SUMMER was produced by Lorne Michaels, written by SNL head writer and "Weekend Update" co-anchor Colin Jost, and features many current and former SNL cast members who probably had better things to do between seasons but didn't want to piss off the boss and the head writer. Paramount buried this like a state secret, very quietly dumping it on VOD and on Netflix Instant, perhaps hoping that it'll trick less-savvy streaming viewers into confusing it with WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER: FIRST DAY OF CAMP. Jost's autobiographical script follows the very bland and Jost-like Danny Campbell (Graham Phillips) over his proverbial Last Summer Before College. Harvard-bound Danny and his best buddy Frank (Zack Pearlman as Jonah Hill and Josh Gad) are lifeguards at Staten Island's Great Kills Swim Club, along with lunkheaded stud Anthony (John DeLuca), hot tomboy Mary Ellen (Cecily Strong), and beer-guzzling, chain-smoking slacker Skootch (Bobby Moynihan as Zach Galifianakis as Bluto Blutarsky), and all are in constant battle against uptight, Speedo-wearing boss Chuck Casino (Mike O'Brien). Danny also spends the summer awkwardly pursuing his one-time babysitter Krystal Manicucci (Ashley Greene, not having a good 2015 between this and BURYING THE EX), the daughter of feared mob boss Leo Manicucci (Vincent Pastore as Vincent Pastore as Big Pussy). The crux of the plot deals with Danny trying to blow off a forced Disneyworld trip with his loving but clingy parents (Jim Gaffigan and Kate Walsh) to have one last blowout kegger at the pool, which the nefarious Chuck Casino keeps trying to sabotage since he wasn't invited. There's also Gina Gershon as one of the horny, wine-guzzling housewives constantly pursuing Anthony, Penny Marshall as a cranky food stand manager, Will Forte as a paraplegic ex-biker, Jost and his brother Casey as laid-back, partying cops (in no way inspired by Seth Rogen and Bill Hader in SUPERBAD), Method Man as a pot-dealing ice cream truck driver, Kate McKinnon as another horny housewife, Jackson Nicoll basically playing the same kid he played in BAD GRANDPA, and Fred Armisen as Bill Murray from CADDYSHACK, the pool club's maintenance guy who spends the movie haplessly trying to combat a rapidly-growing hornets' nest.
Jost tries to balance mawkish sentimentality with post-Farrelly/Apatow raunch but nothing gels, and the degree to which STATEN ISLAND SUMMER rips off both CADDYSHACK and SUPERBAD is utterly shameless (even the opening credits have Danny riding his bike around town like Michael O'Keefe's Danny in CADDYSHACK--all that's missing is Kenny Loggins' "I'm Alright"). The much-maligned Jost has taken plenty of shots over his performance on "Weekend Update," and while he'll never be the worst WU anchor thanks to Colin Quinn, STATEN ISLAND SUMMER does nothing to win over the Jost detractors. Directed by Rhys Thomas, who handles a lot of SNL's filmed segments, STATEN ISLAND SUMMER is hopelessly self-indulgent, aggressively unfunny, and, in keeping with the Apatow influence, entirely too long at 108 minutes, almost like Jost and Thomas felt everything they wrote and shot was too hilarious to lose. With today's ever-evolving distribution patterns, some good movies get lost in the shuffle. STATEN ISLAND SUMMER is not one of them. (R, 108 mins, currently available on Netflix Instant)
