On DVD/Blu-ray: RICKI AND THE FLASH (2015) and AMERICAN ULTRA (2015)

RICKI AND THE FLASH
(US - 2015)

Over her legendary career, Meryl Streep has demonstrated that she's capable of pretty much everything, so while it may seem like a stretch to imagine her as an aging rocker, it doesn't take long to accept her in the role. Streep is Ricki Rendazzo, who's more or less a D-list Bonnie Raitt in the grand scheme of things: her classic rock cover band Ricki and the Flash have a loyal following as the house band at a Tarzana bar that draws the same crowd every night of the week, but after one unsuccessful album over 20 years ago, she never came close to hitting the big time. Ricki's pursuit of fame and fortune came at a price: in the late '80s, she walked away from her life as Indianapolis housewife Linda Brummel, and though she's made sporadic appearances in the lives of ex-husband Pete (Kevin Kline) and their children, her job as a mother has been fulfilled by Pete's second wife Maureen (Audra McDonald). Now, Ricki has been summoned back to Indianapolis after her daughter Julie (Streep's daughter Mamie Gummer) attempts suicide when her husband leaves her for another woman. Had RICKI AND THE FLASH kept that dysfunctional family dynamic as its focus, it would've been a lot better than the film that screenwriter Diablo Cody (JUNO) and the great director Jonathan Demme (STOP MAKING SENSE, THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) ended up making. For a while, it goes along similar lines as the Cody-scripted YOUNG ADULT, even resorting to some well-done scenes of squirming discomfort, as when Ricki and Pete confront Julie's estranged, dickhead husband at a bar. I also like the approach Cody takes with Kline's Pete, who's happier with Maureen, has made peace with the past and, surprisingly by Hollywood standards, has moved on with his life and honestly harbors no resentment toward his ex-wife. Even more against convention, he may still have feelings for her but stops himself from acting on them. And Ricki's presence--and her tentative reconnection with her daughter and her sons, one sympathetic and forgiving (Sebastian Stan), the other bitter and resentful (Nick Westrate)--does manage to pull Julie off the ledge and get her taking steps toward rebuilding her life.

But then Demme abandons that, almost completely. Pete, Julie, and the rest disappear for a long stretch as Ricki returns to Tarzana and gets serious with her guitarist/boyfriend Greg (Rick Springfield) before heading back to Indianapolis for her son's wedding. It's here where Demme sees fit to turn the film into a less caustic version of his own RACHEL GETTING MARRIED before letting it careen into full-on feelgood bullshit with a cast sing-along as Ricki and the Flash boot the wedding band off stage as the uptight onlookers sneer their disapproval but are eventually won over, get up and start dancing. Yes, a blunt and honest film about fractured family dynamics and decades-old wounds turns into a movie that ends with everyone getting over hating Ricki (and her far-right politics, which are introduced and promptly forgotten) and joining her onstage for a big, triumphant jam session at her son's wedding reception. Streep, Springfield (who's quite good here) and the band playing the Flash (featuring guys like keyboardist Bernie Worrell and drummer Joe Vitale) are really playing the songs, and Demme seems more interested in letting Streep show off her rhythm guitar skills and her singing voice in full-length Tom Petty, U2, and Bruce Springsteen covers. RICKI AND THE FLASH just utterly collapses in its second half to the point where it's not out of the question to wonder if Ricki is imagining the whole thing. The first half is honest, smart, and occasionally scathingly funny (Julie to Ricki: "Do you have a gig or do you always dress like a hooker from NIGHT COURT?"), but it just skids to a halt in the second half with one endless song after another and that godawful finale. And why is the bartender from Tarzana dancing at the wedding in Indianapolis?  The band making the trip is silly enough, but the fucking Ricki superfan bartender? Was Demme shooting the movie and realized Cody only had 50 minutes of script, so he decided to wing it the rest of the way? (PG-13, 101 mins)


AMERICAN ULTRA
(US/Switzerland - 2015)

A one-joke comedy that plays like a mash-up of screenwriter Max Landis' DVD collection, AMERICAN ULTRA initially seems like one of those movies that's trying too hard to be an instant cult classic until you realize it isn't trying to be much of anything at all. A splattery, stoner take on THE BOURNE IDENTITY, AMERICAN ULTRA takes place in the fictional West Virginia town of Liman, where pot-addled slacker Mike Howell (Jesse Eisenberg) works at a carryout and spends his free time getting baked with his live-in girlfriend Phoebe (Kristen Stewart). But it turns out Mike is a CIA sleeper agent in the top-secret Ultra program and only becomes aware of his abilities as an unstoppable killing machine when he's activated by Agent Lasseter (Connie Britton), who's trying to save him from the machinations of Yates (Topher Grace), an ass-kissing agency douchebag hellbent on eliminating all traces of the Ultra program. As CIA agents and covert assassins converge on Liman, with the media being fed a story about the town being quarantined, Mike and Phoebe try to stay alive, with Mike instinctively--though he's too perpetually high to figure out how--using anything at his disposal to kill the assets sent to make him vanish.

I'm not sure anyone was demanding a BOURNE movie filtered through HALF-BAKED, but the results are neither as goofy as you'd expect nor as funny as Landis (son of John and writer of the overrated CHRONICLE) thinks. The weed angle is eventually abandoned altogether as ULTRA becomes a lot like a conventional thriller with only the cartoonish, PUNISHER; WAR ZONE-level splatter and would-be CRANK-style gonzo attitude to indicate that it's supposed to be played for laughs. Eisenberg and Stewart fared much better together in ADVENTURELAND, and director Nima Nourizadeh (the found-footage teen comedy PROJECT X) has a great supporting cast at his disposal but doesn't do much with them: Grace, not the most plausible casting for the head of a secret division of the CIA, can play this kind of unctuous turd in his sleep, Bill Pullman has a few scenes as a CIA big shot, John Leguizamo pops up as a strip club owner who's also Mike's dealer, Tony Hale does his umpteenth variation on Buster Bluth as a needy, nervous Lasseter underling, and only Walton Goggins makes a memorable impression as a constantly-laughing assassin named (wait for it) Laugher, whose comedic demeanor masks a depressed cognizance of his autonomy and individuality being stripped from him by his CIA brainwashers. That's as close as AMERICAN ULTRA comes to making a statement about anything. In the end, it's a lot of noise, a lot of CGI (even the exhaled pot smoke is CGI'd!), and not much funny. THE BOURNE LEBOWSKI, it ain't. (R, 96 mins)

In Theaters: LAST VEGAS (2013)

LAST VEGAS
(US - 2013)

Directed by Jon Turtletaub.  Written by Dan Fogelman.  Cast: Michael Douglas, Robert De Niro, Morgan Freeman, Kevin Kline, Mary Steenburgen, Romany Malco, Jerry Ferrara, Joanna Gleason, Roger Bart, Michael Ealy, Bre Blair, April Billingsley.  (PG-13, 105 mins)

LAST VEGAS makes it pretty easy to just think of it as GRUMPY OLD HANGOVER and doesn't try much harder than it needs to, but if you approach it as nothing more than harmless entertainment, you might find yourself laughing quite a bit. Old people being raunchy or doing youthful things are formulas that are always fodder for cheap laughs, but with five Oscar-winners on board, the film can coast on their history and screen presence alone.  There's also occasional bits of heart and poignancy amidst the easy and predictable old age jokes.  Wisely keeping it at a PG-13 considering that the target audience really isn't into grossout humor, LAST VEGAS accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do:  great actors we've known for decades working together for the first time and clearly enjoying themselves.  Sure, it's nobody's best movie, but it's hard to dislike.

Four best friends of 60 years are reunited for a Vegas bachelor party when one--wealthy, over-tanned bachelor Billy (Michael Douglas) is marrying a woman nearly 40 years younger.  Twice-divorced Archie (Morgan Freeman) is recovering from a stroke and living with his overprotective son (Michael Ealy).  Sam (Kevin Kline) has had a knee and hip replacement and is bored with Florida retirement.  Paddy (Robert De Niro) lost his wife to cancer a year earlier, spends his days in his bathrobe watching TV, and is still angry with Billy for not being able to make the funeral.  Once together, old resentments between Billy and Paddy expectedly resurface, especially considering that Paddy's late wife was in love with both of them 40 years earlier and chose Paddy.  Things hit a bump in the road when the guys meet a lounge singer (Mary Steenburgen), whose bright presence brings Paddy out of his shell but also has Billy questioning whether marrying someone so young is a good idea.

The emotional core of LAST VEGAS is the rocky relationship between Billy and Paddy, with Archie and Sam providing much of the sillier comedy.  Kline's Sam, in particular, gets some of the best bits and a lot of his one-liners feel improvised by the actor ("A blowjob's not out of the question!").  Given a condom and permission by his wife (Joanna Gleason) to cheat if it brings some spark back into his life (they say age is just a number, and 66-year-old Kline and 63-year-old Gleason both seem too spry and energetic to be living in a retirement community where everyone looks 90), the mild-mannered Sam basically tells every attractive young woman in sight that he's available.  Freeman's Archie just wants to live it up, gambling, dancing, guzzling vodka & Red Bull and just enjoying being away from his loving but sheltering son (one of the film's more amusing jokes is Archie's phone playing Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle" as the ringtone when his son calls).  There's very little here that you don't expect, and director Jon Turtletaub and writer Dan Fogelman (CARS, THE GUILT TRIP) take some easy shots like Viagra jokes, Sam not being able to figure out how to pop the trunk on a rental car, old people eating dinner at 4:00 pm, LMFAO's Redfoo shaking his junk in Paddy's face, the guys briefly pretending to be mobsters (because that's apparently a requirement for any De Niro comedy), with retired accountant Sam saying "They call me Sammy the Stove...cuz I cook da books!" or Sam taking off his glasses in a bar so he'll appear younger, only to end up hitting on a drag queen (Roger Bart), but there's also some genuine emotion at times.  Douglas (now at the same age as dad Kirk when he was in a Red Hot Chili Peppers mosh pit in 1986's TOUGH GUYS) has a great scene where he says his 40-year-old brain can't process that his body is 70 and the ride is winding down, and it's quite effective considering his recent health issues.  And it does a nice job of capturing the rhythms and the shorthand conversation of lifelong friends with typical elderly health problems (Billy, calling Archie on the phone: "Archie, it's Billy!"  Archie: "Oh God...is it your prostate?").  It's also hard to dislike any movie with a self-deprecating cameo by 50 Cent, turning in his finest film work yet playing himself, knocking on the door of the guys' penthouse suite and asking them to turn the music down.

Sure, like THE BUCKET LIST, another geriatric-aimed comedy from the recent past, LAST VEGAS is slight and relies completely on its stars, but they're too good for it to not work.  Douglas, De Niro, Freeman, Kline, and Steenburgen have a welcome familiarity to each of them that makes the film go down like comfort food.  Yeah, it's easy for jaded cineastes to lament that De Niro's been phoning it in for a while but, like his co-stars, he's obviously having some fun here.  For fans who have grown old along with these actors for the last 30-40 years (though Freeman and Kline didn't come to prominence until the '80s), it's nice to see them still getting it done and not having lost a bit of their star power.  Is it WALL STREET, TAXI DRIVER, THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION, or A FISH CALLED WANDA?  Of course not, but it doesn't have to be.  What it does is respect its actors and their legacies enough to not ask them to embarrass themselves, which was a very definite possibility. Cinesnobs need to check the cynicism at the door with this one.  It is what it is--it's pretty consistently funny and it gives its intended audience what they came to see.