Charlie's Angels.
Good morning, angels.
Good morning, Charlie.
They're private eyes who are easy on the eyes in Charlie's Angels, one of five new movies
we'll be reviewing this week. I'm Richard Roper, columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times.
I'm Roger Ebert, film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times. Our first movie is Charlie's Angels.
And watching this movie is like watching your favorite relative with a lampshade on his
head. I like Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore, and Lucy Liu. I like their work. I like their
looks. I like them, but not in this movie where sheer lunacy overtakes them and they
make ridiculous spectacles out of themselves. It's nonstop, brainless action, a jiggle show
where three babe detectives take orders from the disembodied voice of Charlie and carry
out a hunt for a kidnapped millionaire.
This is the typical scene from the movie repeated over and over. Something blows up real good
and the angels fly through the air getting real bad smudges on their makeup.
Sometimes they survive stunts even James Bond wouldn't try.
Bill Murray is the angels best pal and Kim Curry is a suspect.
Blowfish? Isn't that pointless? It's a rare delicacy for the man who has no fear of an
angel.
Charlie's Angels is a movie almost tailor made for those campus town brew and view type
theaters where pictures of beer are rushed to the audience during the screening. It's
the kind of movie they'd like on Wayne's World. But in the cold light of day it's empty and
noisy and relentless. I can imagine a good satire that combined the Bond pictures and
the Charlie's Angels TV series. But this movie goes through those motions without wit or
originality or joy. It's expensive and elaborate but it's not fun and I'm not even going
to get into whether it makes the angels into sex objects because of course it does but
in a better movie I wouldn't have minded.
Of all the bad movies that have been made from bad TV shows this may be the worst and
that's saying a lot. You mentioned it's a jiggle show. You know what? Make it a jiggle
movie. Have it rated R and just be what you are. Instead they kind of hedge their bets.
The characters are into martial arts. They don't use guns. Drew Barrymore is lifting
her way and she's telling these people I'm going to kick your butt and you're not believing
it for one second. They make a huge mistake at the end of this terrible movie by showing
a gag reel at the end showing the actual actresses stumbling through the stunts which confirms
their suspicions that they didn't do all those stunts so what we watch for 90 minutes is
a big stunt show with a lot of explosion and then some really bad cheesy dialogue from
actresses who look like they'd rather be somebody else.
We knew they didn't do the stunts but I mean those scenes where they're lifted up by the
explosion and thrown through the air, land against the windshield of the car, little smudge
here, little smudge there. I, you know, Drew Barrymore is so good. Well they're all so
good. They've been so good. They're wrong for this movie. This is just an ill-conceived
project from the beginning. It's just not a good idea. They didn't have any rationale
for the approach they were going to take. They didn't make it funny. It's not entertaining.
It's a dead zone. Is it a comedy? Is it a camp movie? Is it an action thriller? What's
Bill Murray doing? It was really a bomb. Okay our next movie is Loving Jezebel. This is
a self-conscious modern romance about a curiously nerdy young stud who doesn't have the willpower
to resist other men's women. Hill Harper plays Theodorus Melville, the dorky mama's boy who
rambles on like a talking hallmark card but he has some kind of hypnotic effect on a series
of great looking but nearly brain-dead women. That's what I know about jazz. Jazz is love.
It's life. That's jazz. Do you like John Coltrane? Don't even get me started on the train. Dun,
dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun. Alright pick me up at eight. Sandrine
Holt plays Mona, another sexy oddball. She's dating Theo's friend but she longs for Theo.
Of course I'd show you my HIV negative certificate. We'd go to Trini. We'd have carnival babies
and lead a beautifully eccentric yet traditional existence because you have this face. This
face. Would love to see every single day. It'd be like pretty women or something. I'll
I'll know so precisely.
Yeah, we'd have our own banana tree.
I'm still not sure what Trinidad and banana trees
have to do with pretty woman, but in any case,
Theo finally falls in love with a married woman.
I just want to be like one of the goofy brothers that
pop up in the J. Crew catalog from time to time,
wearing khakis, walking down the beach, holding hands
with a woman who I love.
That romance feels contrived, and so
do Theo's other relationships.
The women he hooks up with aren't really Jezebel's.
They're daffy beauties with troubled personalities.
Take that girl Theo meets in college.
First, she tells Theo she's repulsed
by the act of kissing.
Then she claims to be a virgin.
Then she jumps Theo.
Then months later, she admits she had a boyfriend all along,
and she's been sleeping with that boyfriend too.
Yet when she shows up at Theo's apartment a few years later,
he takes her back when he should be calling the police.
Loving Jezebel is the most annoying look
at sexual relationships I've seen since body shots.
Well, I guess I liked it a little more than you did,
although certainly not enough to recommend it.
But I thought Hill Harper had a really engaging personality.
The only problem is that the movie never really
deals with any of the relationships.
It's more like, once again, a babe show, a swimsuit issue
where he just kind of goes through the girls one
at a time, and they look great.
There's one woman in this movie named Lisa Ayatrinye, who
plays the ballerina, who is a major babe.
I think she could be a Bond girl.
I'm telling you.
I think they could have done more with her,
or at least they could have listed her in the credits
anyway, you know?
Roger, there are many major babes in this movie.
There are, yes.
I don't agree with you that he's got an engaging personality.
We don't see why these women are attracted to him.
I don't see what's so great about this guy.
He's got an engaging personality.
The screenwriter is not giving him dialogue
that could have been a little smarter.
He does sign.
You're quite right.
He sounds like a Hallmark card a lot of the time.
He seems like a really lucky guy to me.
These girls shouldn't fall for this stuff.
OK, later in the show, Matt Damon, Will Smith,
and Charlize Theron in Robert Ripper's new film,
The Legend of Bagger Vance.
Coming up next, Adam Garcia wants to put on a show in boot men.
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A steelworker screws metal plates onto his work boots
and bangs out a macho tap number there in Boot Men,
a new dance movie from Australia.
That was Adam Garcia from Coyote Ugly as the would-be dancer
who convinces his coworkers at the mill to join in his dream
of an industrial strength dance company.
And it was Andrew Kaluski as one of the troupe members.
Earlier in the film, the cocky Garcia auditions for a famous choreographer.
OK, five, six, seven, and.
Stop, stop, stop, stop.
Why would I hire you if you can't follow a simple direction?
Because I'm bloody good.
That's Andrew Doyle as the choreographer.
The movie is based on a hard hat dance review by its director,
Dean Perry, who in ancient musical tradition
builds up to the big dance number.
The dancers in Boot Men are more macho than rugby players,
and some of the numbers have real life and energy,
but maybe they should have been used in a concert film
of Perry's original stage production of Tap Dogs
because Boot Men is cluttered up with all the usual musical movie
cliches from the unplanned pregnancy to the trouble
finding a venue to the determination to put on a show
to, of course, the father who opposes his son's dream
but turns up late at the concert and is proud after all.
You get a big close up of him with this kind of change
of spirit on his face there.
Plus, there was so much banging that the cast album of this movie
must sound like they went out to the kitchen
and rattle those pots and pans.
I know.
Yeah, you're right.
I mean, there are some things alike in this movie.
I like these dancers.
Adam Garcia has got a lot of appeal, but it's just so ridiculous.
Too many cliches.
You get to that big dance number at the end.
They do one number, and then they get called back for an encore.
So I'm thinking, those people, what did they see?
About a 14-minute dance show?
You'd think they'd want their money back after that.
And just too many cliches, one piled after another.
Nothing new or fresh in here.
No real reason to make the movie.
What I couldn't get around was the idea of banging on steel plates.
I mean, I realize I must be hopelessly...
It's like Stomper Blast and you mention these stage shows.
You know, but it just seemed to me like, after a while,
this would be a musical number in a larger show.
This would be an effect.
But it wouldn't be the whole evening, would it?
Well, it might be a long evening if that's all you did.
We may have exhausted the men dancing genre for a while
after the Full Monty and Billy Elliot.
This is like Billy Elliot on steroids.
Enough of the men dancing for a while.
Coming up next, Will Smith gives lessons in golf and life
to Matt Damon and the legend of Bagger Vance.
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See the trick is to find your swing.
What did you say?
Well you lost your swing.
We got to go find it.
Matt Damon is an emotionally crippled golfer and Will Smith is his guardian angel caddy
in the legend of Bagger Vance directed by Robert Redford.
This depression era fable unfolds in Savannah, Georgia where Damon's Randolph Junah is a
once great golfer who returned from World War I a broken man.
Junah hasn't picked up a club in years but now he's going to take on golfing legend
Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen in a match arranged by his ex-fiance Adele played by Charlize
Theron.
Look in my eyes and tell me what you see.
Determination, pure determination.
Panic, Adele, pure panic.
I'm eight strokes behind the two greatest golfers in the history of the sport.
They've never blown a lead in their lives and I'm going to win.
You know why?
Panic?
That's right.
We get a lot of speeches about golf as a metaphor for life as when Junah gets a pep talk from
a ten year old boy who idolizes him.
This is the only game I know you can call penalty on yourself.
If you're honest, who's the worst people are?
There just ain't no other game like it.
Adding some much needed humor to the mix is Bruce McGill as the free spirited Walter Hagen
who regards Junah as a fellow cynic.
How'd you like to go on tour with me?
We'd have some good matches.
I'd expect a win of course.
But then we'd split the money 70-30 afterwards.
You get the 30.
Like the natural, which gave Redford one of his career defining roles, the legend of Baggard
Vance is a sun dappled myth about a blonde sports guy who resurfaces after a decade to
give the game one more try and also to reclaim a lost love.
But even fairy tales have to make sense.
Baggard's character is no more developed than Tinkerbell.
He appears out of nowhere, spouts cut rate zen philosophy and then just disappears.
And Redford's Savannah circa 1931 is kind of a dream world where race really isn't an
issue and the streets are lined with mint condition cars.
Given the talents of the players involved, I found the legend of Baggard Vance to be
one of the biggest disappointments of this year.
I love this film.
I am stunned to hear that.
Loved it.
It just absolutely got under my skin and into my mind.
It created a spell.
It's not just about golf, it's about games, it's about learning to do something because
you love to do it and because it's fun instead of having to do it or being made to do it
or wanting to make money doing it.
It's about sportsmanship.
I love the way that Bobby Jones and Walter Hagen work with this guy in terms of their
example in the way that they respect the game.
I don't play golf.
It's not about golf, it's about life.
I felt that the caddy-
We have a lot of golfing scenes for a movie.
It's not about golf.
It's about the game, the caddy is, we don't want an explanation.
He comes out of nowhere, he goes into nowhere.
It's not about race.
The cars are mint condition because they were new in 1931.
Well, who can afford the new cars in the middle of the depression?
I mean, they have-
The same people who go to a $10,000 invitational golf tournament.
There was a lot of money around in 1931.
But the whole setup with that golf tournament was we're going to save the town because it's
financially depressed right now.
No, no.
They're not going to save the town.
They're going to save the golf course because their father committed suicide, so this is
going to save the golf course, not the town.
But it's going to inject the town with an infusion of financial-
This is a fable.
This isn't about whether it's a realistic portrait of the depression.
What does Bagger Vance say to Matt Damon's character that's so profound?
He says-
He sounds like he's just reading from a fortune cookie to him all the time.
He says that you can't win the game of golf.
You can only play the game of golf.
And at the end, it's kind of a metaphor for life.
It really is.
I think Chevy Chase's character gave better advice on golf to Noonan and Caddyshack.
Well, I think you've defined the poles of golf movies.
Okay, our next movie is this year's Iranian entry for the Oscars, and it has a stark simplicity
that's surprisingly powerful.
It's named A Time for Drunken Horses, and it's about three poor Curtis children who
live near the border with Iraq.
A brother and sister care for their crippled brother, a dwarf, who will die without an
operation, and as they're trucked from their village to do cheap child labor in town, they
tenderly cherish the little fellow.
The truck is stopped by border patrols, and they're separated from their village and from
their family.
They're on their own.
Their wife is desperate as they join smugglers who are moving truck tires into Iraq.
The sister agrees to marry into a family if it will provide an operation for her brother.
I'm going to find it hard to forget the eyes of that desperate little brother jammed into
a saddle bag near the end of this movie.
The title of A Time for Drunken Horses refers to the practice of spiking the mule's water
with vodka to keep them going in the icing mountain passes.
The movie is in the tradition of neorealism.
The actors play characters much like themselves, creating a portrait of an ethnic minority
that lives in Iran, Iraq, Greece, and Turkey and is treated everywhere as outsiders.
This kind of movie gives you images to go with the headlines.
They say hard times produce great art, and recent Iranian films like this one prove that
it's true.
This truly is a great movie, and you know, we know a little bit about the courage you
read about them.
Those are those nomads who are being oppressed, but this movie really brings us into their
lives.
And these people are so oppressed and so poor, it's like you're watching something in the
19th century just to get food every day, just to get enough water to drink to live.
They have to, you know, smuggle things, and kids have to work.
It's not like, well, I want to get a job because I want to help out the family.
They don't work.
They're not going to survive.
And the children in this movie are so good, and you care about them so much.
You mentioned the little boy who's going to die.
I don't know if he says a word during the entire movie, but he's so moving and so affecting,
and you're really brought inside a new world.
He sees everything, and they carry him around with them, and they love him, and he's really,
it's all they have is this brother that they want to take care of.
They have nothing else, and they only have such desperation that she's even willing basically
to sell herself to help this little brother that she loves so much.
And it's all done in the very edge of survival.
When they're up there in the cold, you're thinking they're giving vodka to the mules,
but there's no vodka for anyone else.
Exactly.
And it's very cold in there.
And you see, you're kind of shocked to realize that if you're in Iran, Iraq is actually a
better place to be.
They're more prosperous over there.
Amazingly enough.
Yeah, amazingly enough.
It's a profound piece of work, I thought.
Okay, coming up next, a father and son reach across time to stop a killer in my video pick
of the week.
Something we did change the past.
Psst.
Are you sleepy?
No.
What do you think it's going to be?
I don't know.
I don't know what it's going to be like.
Mom says there's even more magical stuff now.
Okay, guys, back to bed.
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A New York cop reaches into his past to save his parents with a little help from the Northern
Lights and the 1969 New York Mets in Frequency, a thriller with a Twilight Zone touch.
Jim Caviezel plays John Sullivan, a troubled cop whose father, played by Dennis Quaid,
died in a warehouse blaze in 1969.
At least that's the way Sully remembers it, until a freaky fold in the atmosphere enables
him to communicate with his dad across 30 years of time.
Hey, who the hell are you?
What's going on?
Nothing.
Oh my God.
You brought the desk.
I can see it.
Now Sully's firefighter dad is able to survive that blaze, but that sets off a chain reaction
of events that give Sully a whole new set of memories and problems.
You imagine the odds of digging up a nightingale murder?
She makes 10.
10?
No, I remember this case.
It was three.
He killed three women.
Who you talking?
You're no better than anybody, John.
You looked at these files a thousand times.
Frequency is a creative blend of science fiction and murder mystery, as a father and son separated
by three decades team up to stop a killer before he destroys the entire family.
Now as you might expect with a story in which someone in 1969 can talk to his son in 1999,
you just have to accept this miracle at face value.
At one point the 36 year old Sully even talks to his six year old self.
But frequency hums along at a furious pace and it opens some thought provoking doors
into the worlds of chance and fate and it's my video pick of the week.
Let's hear it for the lady.
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Now let's take another look at the movies we reviewed on this week's show.
Two thumbs down, way down, way, way down, way, way down for Charlie's Angels, which
is eye candy for the blind.
Two thumbs down for Loving Jezebel, although I like Hill Harper's performance more than
Richard did.
Two more thumbs down for Boot Men, the loudest movie ever made about tap dancing.
A major split on the legend of Bagger Vance.
Richard thought it was hokey.
I loved its tone, mood, and philosophy.
And finally, two thumbs up for A Time for Drunken Horses, a heartbreaking drama from
Iran.
And so, as far as I'm concerned, The Legend of Bagger Vance is a really good film, especially
for grownups who care about this stuff.
I cannot go along with you on that, but more than that I have to stress, if you're having
the urge to see Charlie's Angels, sit still until that urge goes away and you'll thank
me for it later.
Excellent advice.
Okay, remember you can hear our reviews at ebert-roper-movies.com and read us in print
at suntimes.com.
Next week, more new movies, including the comedy Little Nicky, starring Adam Sandler
and Harvey Keitel.
Release your evil.
And also the sci-fi thriller The Six Days, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.
That's next week, and until then, the balcony is closed.