Film Reviews

I’m warning you; he’s a ladykiller.

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ANOTHER GAY MOVIE Much like Mel Brooks’ unfunny later films, writer-director Todd Stephens’ gay reinvention of the straight teen comedy is a parody without a worthy target. Swiping the gotta-get-laid plot of American Pie, Stephens introduces us to four perfectly dissimilar gay friends — one nerd, one jock, one flamer, one boy next door — looking to lose their virginity before college. Bulldozing through references to Carrie and Porky’s and whatever other high school films it can remember, Another Gay Movie wants to serve as a campy we’re-here-we’re-queer revolt against the often crass horndog swill that Hollywood has peddled to heterosexual audiences for the last 25 years. But substituting gratuitous shots of Richard Hatch’s schlong for gratuitous shots of Shannon Elizabeth’s ta-tas isn’t satire or commentary or liberation — it’s simply replacing one cheaply titillating image for another, albeit with even worse production values. Stephens finds room for a few touching scenes between class valedictorian Griff (Mitch Morris) and his secret love Jarod (eerie Stephen Malkmus look-alike Jonathan Chase), but AGM exists first and foremost to force-feed juvenile bathroom humor down our throats — almost literally in one repellent scene — and to remind us that butt plugs and penis pumps aren’t automatically hilarious comic props. An argument can be made that AGM exposes a double standard in American cinema: Why shouldn’t homosexuals have the same loud ’n’ stupid sex comedies that mainstream society expects almost as a birthright? Perhaps, but making a gay film only slightly less intolerable than its straight counterparts isn’t much to be proud of. (Sunset 5) (Tim Grierson)

 GO THE ANT BULLY They’re kind, cooperative and altruistic. They toil endlessly for scant reward. They live for the greater good of the group and won’t put up with the abuse of individual power. And if you catch the drift of John A. Davis’ animated fantasy, based on the 1999 book by John Nickle, the commonwealth of ants has evolved specifically to service the limo-liberal messaging that Hollywood preaches but won’t live by. Accordingly, the estimable residents of a suburban American ant colony have much to teach young Lucas (voiced by Zach Tyler Eisen), a skinny, freckled human so overprotected by Mom and traumatized by neighborhood bullies that he takes out his frustrations on their anthill with a viciously applied garden hose — until he finds himself shrunk to fit and sentenced by their queen (Meryl Streep) to live among them and absorb the way of the mensch. This may be more life lessons than you bargained for on a popcorn outing, but The Ant Bully sports a glittering voice cast that includes Julia Roberts as a motherly critter who repeatedly saves Lucas from being swallowed or stamped on, Nicolas Cage as a wizard ant who’s a touch too trigger-happy with the potions, and Paul Giamatti as an evil exterminator. Wittily manipulating scale to generate the requisite fright factor, the movie is stuffed with visual delights both lyrical (a squadron of ants hang-gliding on flower petals) and visceral (a battalion of bottle-blue wasps on the wing). It goes without saying that Lucas will rise to all manner of occasions, but not before Davis, creator of the scrappy boy genius Jimmy Neutron, has rather tediously put the story on hold every 10 minutes for a screechy battle sequence that, however accomplished, lowers the tone of this otherwise niftily imagined movie. (Citywide) (Ella Taylor)

AZUMI Based on a popular manga serial, Azumi tells the tale of a young orphan girl who’s raised to be an assassin during the late Tokugawa era. Aya Ueto looks great in her Jedi miniskirt (complete with sexy, schoolgirl knee-highs), but her Azumi has the appearance of a teenager capable of killing lots of time at the mall, not scores of samurai villains. A star of Japanese television, Ueto doesn’t have enough charisma or physical toughness to carry a feature film. (She reportedly did many of her own stunts, which may explain why the fight scenes are so underwhelming.) The pulpy revenge narrative, adapted by Rikiya Mizushima and Isao Kiriyama, provides plenty of dramatic set pieces, but director Ryuhei Kitamura can’t make them soar. His bland, wide-angle, high-key visual style kills any sense of period detail — instead of evoking 19th-century Japan, the film looks like it was shot in Valencia. More damaging, though, are the wooden acting, hokey special effects and crude choreography. Failing in its attempts at Zhang Yimou–like poetry, Azumi calls to mind a long, blood-splattered director’s cut of a Power Rangers episode. (Nuart) (James C. Taylor)

BEOWULF & GRENDEL Written around the ninth century (give or take 300 years), “Beowulf” is that epic poem you skimmed over in school, the one with three bloody battles featuring an evil troll, his pissed-off mum and one fire-breathing dragon. In this unsatisfying screen version, screenwriter Andrew Rai Berzins and Icelandic-born director Sturla Gunnarsson skip the dragon altogether and concentrate on the all-too-human demons that have driven Grendel (Ingvar Sigurdsson) to mayhem. As a boy, he witnessed his father’s murder at the hands of a Dane king (Stellan Skarsgard), and now, after years of cave living, he’s assassinating the king’s subjects, mostly by bashing their heads against the wall. Enter Beowulf (Gerard Butler), fabled warrior, who grows increasingly conflicted after learning from a sultry red-haired soothsayer (Sarah Polley, channeling Tori Amos) that Grendel is the maligned one, not the Danes. Filmed in Iceland, Beowulf & Grendel is beautiful, grungy and a little too tasteful for its own good. You can practically feel the filmmakers yearning to have Beowulf and Grendel go all Rambo on each other. Instead, they keep pulling back for more Old English angst, as if they’re torn between commerce and winning the approval of their high school English teacher. (Westside Pavilion) (Chuck Wilson)