At the
Movies Hints of humor
By JOSEPH CUNNEEN
Nurse Betty is the early
favorite of young sophisticates as this years fall comedy. Theres
been lots of buzz, favorable advance reviews and a sense that it will be a
breakout movie for Renée Zellweger, who plays its sweet, almost
terminally naive title character. My main problem is that director Neil LaBute
is one of the last people Id go to if I were looking for comedy.
In the Company of Men, the film that made his
reputation a few years back, told the near-sickening story of several male
office workers who pretend to be smitten with a less than gorgeous colleague.
Of course, there is such a thing as black comedy, and it can even be
uproariously funny -- see Doctor Strangelove.
But funny in Nurse Betty only means making its
audience feel superior to its leading lady, who is unable to distinguish
between TV drama and reality.
The movie opens with the grisly murder of Bettys husband Del
(Aaron Eckhart). Betty observes the last two minutes of this savagery through a
partly open door while watching her favorite daytime soap, A Reason to
Love, featuring Dr. David Ravell (Greg Kinnear). Betty answers a few
questions from the police, packs her bag and leaves Fair Oaks, Kan., on a trip
to Los Angeles, where she believes she can find Dr. Ravell. Meanwhile
Dels killers, Charlie (Morgan Freeman) and Wesley (Chris Rock), who were
obviously involved in a criminal scheme that went sour, are looking for Betty,
on the assumption she may have what they had hoped to pick up from their
victim.
There are some amusing adventures along the way, and when she hits
L.A., Betty manages to get accepted as a nurse by acting heroically during a
shootout. Soon she even gets invited to a show-biz reception where she meets
Ravell, a self-centered actor named George McCord, who interprets her bubbling
conversation (she always calls him David) as first-class improvisation and a
bid for a part in the show.
Meanwhile, we get occasional glimpses of the criminal pursuers. I
rather hoped Freeman would take over the movie -- he talked of the present job
as his last and of his hope to retire to some place south of the border -- but
suddenly LaBute has him get soft about Betty; Sort of a wholesome Doris
Day thing going, he says to himself.
LaBute doesnt seem to have much of an idea of how to bring
his material to a climax, and you can probably guess most of what happens. The
characters dont seem to learn much from their experiences, except
possibly the noble Charlie.
Im sure someone in the future is again going to squeeze some
legitimate movie fun out of our confusion of TV with reality, but Nurse
Betty ought to make everyone drop the idea for a while.
Madadayo isnt going to
make it to the mutliplexes, even though it is the last film of one of the
greatest of the post-World War II directors, Akira Kurosawa.
Kurosawa, who died in 1998, knew how to employ violence to serious
effect in Roshomon, Ran and a whole series of samurai
thrillers. He may well have realized that this would be the last movie he would
make, and it is instructive to see him use material of great simplicity to
convey an atmosphere of serenity, idealism and quiet humor.
Madadayo starts with the last class of Hyakken Uchida,
a professor of German literature, who has decided (in 1943, in the midst of the
war) to devote himself full-time to writing. After the professor retires to a
modest house, two of his former students (Hisashi Igawa and George Tokoro)
decide to test its security. But Uchida has anticipated their efforts and put
up a Burglars Entrance sign over his garden gate -- followed
by similar signs that lead prospective burglars back outside. Uchidas
impishness and sense of acceptance is strengthened by the constant support of
his gently radiant wife (Kyoko Kagawa), and even survives the Allied bombs that
force them to move to a doorless hut on a bombed-out estate.
Madadayo is, above all, a wryly sympathetic study of
old age. One of the students uses the term pure gold to describe
the professor. I remained enough of a misanthrope to wish they didnt
laugh so lustily after each of Uchidas mild sallies, but their sentiment
was a rare expression of unaffected love. At the annual birthday banquets,
which give the movie its title, the assembled students chant
Mahda-Kai? (Are you ready yet?), and Uchida
responds, Madadayo (Not yet), before downing a
large glass of beer.
Madadayo is unafraid to wear its heart on its sleeve;
only Kurosawas sureness of touch prevents it from becoming cloying. This
is a rare movie about an old man who is grateful for each new day and remains a
model of simplicity even as he receives the homage of his former students. We
come to realize what Uchida has taught his students: to drink together, in a
spirit of joy and genuine community.
The performance film, The
Original Kings of Comedy, is also about community. The happiness of its
original audience -- it was shot by Spike Lee in February at the Charlotte
Coliseum in North Carolina -- is completely genuine.
With Hollywood making such poor use of its major African-American
actors -- offering them emotionally overwrought scripts that depend on macho
appeal and mindless violence -- we should be grateful that the work of these
four black comedians (Steve Harvey, D.L. Hughley, Cedric the Entertainer and
Bernie Mac) can be seen in theaters all over the United States.
Yes, the constant repetition of the m-f word is tiresome and
self-defeating. I wouldnt have taken my mother, but many of us can learn
something if were patient and watch carefully.
These men have total rapport with the people in front of them. Lee
is wise in letting us see individual responses among many who can hardly hold
themselves back from starting to dance or even rushing up to the stage to hug
one of the comedians. If the tone is male, ribald and super-confident, the
comedians also show their affection -- Steve Harveys hello to the city is
a friendly How you-all doing with your country asses?
Harvey contributes a hilarious summary of the inanities of
Titanic, making it clear that black musicians wouldnt be so
stupid as to go on playing as the ship went down. He also offers a brilliant
putdown of rap music, insisting on the central principle of this show:
One mike. Always one mike. In rap, of course, everyone has a mike,
and the result is We cant understand what one of your asses is
saying. He then runs across the stage, shrieking jibberish, as the
audience explodes with recognition.
When Hughley seems to be going over the top, he pulls back with
Without love, youre missing some major shit in your life.
Like the others, Hughley has no hesitation in talking dirty to
women, but judging by audience reaction, what seems to come across is an
unsentimental affection, even respect. (Its worth mentioning, too, that
though blacks are the vast majority, there is also a sizeable number of young
white men and women in this Charlotte audience.)
Predictably, much of the humor is framed in terms of
generalizations about white and black behavior. The whites generally seem
stupid, as in Cedric the Entertainers example of black people running
from a mass murderer while whites want to stop and find out what the excitement
is about. Most of this is quite good-natured, and includes jibes at a black
convict conducting a bungled escape and the possibilities of future black
expertise in skiing -- you never forget that youre in the hands of
pros.
I was least responsive to the last performer, Bernie Mac, not
because he wasnt skilled but because his darker humor drew on a
(simulated) rage against young people, and even children. Of course, I am old
enough to remember chortling when W. C. Fields used to threaten Baby LeRoy with
extinction, but Fields was constantly humiliated and was never a very
convincing oppressor.
Mac also offers a belated explanation of various m-f usages, one
that is grammatically clever but doesnt explain why these talented
comedians rely on them. They dont need to.
Joseph Cunneen is NCRs regular movie reviewer. His
e-mail address is SCunn24219@aol.com
National Catholic Reporter, September 22,
2000
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