Comedy

dir: Shawn Levy

2010

Some flicks go out of their way to make you wish you were someone or something else. That’s why most entertainment is considered an escape from the mundanity of the everyday. Lose yourself in the fantasy of being some awesomely bicepped highly skilled dancer / spy / seducer / vengeful mutant dentist, and pay us before you’re done, thanks. Not after, before. No refunds.

Other flicks applaud the fact that you, the viewer, are a mundane mediocrity, whose hopes and dreams have been squashed by life, by your own laziness and timidity, and that you are just as you should be. We, Hollywood, wouldn’t want you any other way. Because if you weren’t just as you are, the perfect consumer who can purchase whatever you want, set your life up just as you want, but still always feel vaguely dissatisfied, then why would you be watching Hollywood’s crap? You’d have no need for us and our special magic any longer. And how would we survive?

Occasionally, only a few times over the course of a lifetime, the Hollywood machine produces a flick that not only applauds the fact that white middle class people feel like there’s a lack of passion and excitement in their lives; a passion and excitement that other people elsewhere are always feeling, but it sets out to say, “Hey, you’re all right. All you need is a little bit of an adventure to get you out of your rut, and then everything will be all right.”

dir: Coens

The Brothers Coen have made lots of films, many of them superb. They’ve been at it for a while. They’re critical darlings to this day, and everything they make is taken seriously, no matter how ludicrous it might be. And with No Country for Old Men, they received the highest possible honours Hollywood can bestow upon itself, guaranteeing them first dibs on any projects they could ever want, as long as they don’t cost too much.

Despite long careers working together, A Serious Man, of all their flicks, is the most overtly Jewish thus far (in terms of content and themes). I know that sounds odd, or vaguely anti-Semitic, but it’s not intended as such. They’re not working from an adapted screenplay, so it’s a story they themselves have written, which contains a lot of detail (I think) from their early lives. It also explicitly uses elements of the Jewish faith and the Jewish experience in America in the story it has to tell, which seems to be based on the Book of Job, amongst other things. And you can’t really get more Jewish than the Torah, can you?

And what a kick-ass blockbuster story it is! Our main character Larry (Michael Stuhlbarg), is a mathematics associate professor desperate for that most academic of Holy Grails: tenure. Right from the start, after a very strange intro involving some Yiddish peasants fighting over whether their guest on a cold, stormy night is alive or dead, Larry’s life starts falling apart for no discernible reason.

His tenure becomes tenuous, a disgruntled student alternately threatens and bribes him for a failing grade resulting from Schrodinger’s Cat (whether it’s alive or dead is irrelevant right now), his wife wants to leave him for a guy called Sy Ableman, his kids are alternately a chronic dope smoker about to have his bar mitzvah who’s obsessed with F Troop, and a junior version of Barbara Streisand.

Almost every other character in the flick says Sy Ableman’s name in this really curious way, most often with hushed tones of respect, or with incredulity, as in “Sy Ableman? Sy Ableman?!?!”

Plenty more shit starts to go wrong, in ways that almost seem like either bad luck or like Larry himself is being cursed by God for something he did or didn’t do. Larry’s a mathematician, though, and a rational (though not the “serious” man of the title) man, so he has no truck with concepts as nebulous as luck or destiny, because it’s all about randomness, probabilities and uncertainty principles and other such foofaraw.

dir: Ruben Fleischer

2009

You might not have noticed, but there’s been this plague outbreak recently. It didn’t all happen at once. It’s been a gradual progression, until more recently where it seems like it’s overwhelming everything and everyone.

It’s a plague of zombie movies, visited upon the planet as a prelude presumably to the actual apocalypse. It’s a benevolent but capricious God’s way of getting us ready for when the dead finally do walk the earth.

Either that, or there’s just no original ideas under the sun anymore.

Still, if you’re going to do something unoriginal, at least do it well and make it entertaining. You don’t even have to put that much of a spin on it: just make us smile.

Someone came up with the bright idea (many times, in many different forms, from World War Z to Shaun of the Dead to Pride & Prejudice & Zombies) that if you don’t take it seriously, a zombie plague could be pretty funny. What if you make your main character a college age kid who’s a bit of a dick and a nebbish, and actually have your characters enjoy themselves along the way?

Jesse Eisenberg has carved out a little niche for himself as this kind of compulsive/obsessive nerdy young Woody Allen type guy who’s smart but ill-suited to the social complexities of the big bad world. In that sense, he’s probably more of a Jewish Michael Cera. He’s also terrified of clowns, and germs, probably. Some genius decided taking this nice young chap and dropping him into an America overrun by unholy hordes, paired up with Woody Harrelson at his redneck-y best, would be a winning combination.

They’re probably right. I didn’t think the flick was anywhere near as funny as had been claimed by rapturous audiences and delirious critics, but I did find it entertaining enough. It’s no Shaun of the Dead, but then what is, apart from the legions of imitators that mention Shaun of the Dead in their marketing?

Columbus (Eisenberg), named after his hometown in Ohio, since most everyone in the flick is referred to by their point of origin rather than their actual name, is not only our protagonist but the perpetual fly in our ear, buzzing out a whole bunch of narration for your presumed benefit. Usually this much narration is a sign of a lack of confidence in your own movie, meaning you think people aren’t going to think it’s funny enough without someone else talking over a scene or some footage punching up the overall funniness. Columbus’s voiceovers are important, I guess, in the sense that without them we wouldn’t understand what was going on. I mean, these zombie flicks can get pretty complicated.