Film Reviews: Chalk, The Ex, 28 Weeks Later and Delta Farce

THE PARALLEL A callow youth gets a cosmic comeuppance in The Parallel, an amateurish mashup of The Butterfly Effect and The Family Man (talk about unholy hybrids!) that strains patience from the get-go. Danny Fitzgerald (Taylor Gerard Hart) is the proverbial Big Man on Campus, throwing touchdowns, fielding Ivy League recruitment officers and cheerfully disdaining the existential musings of his gorgeous blond girlfriend, Lynn (Margaret Scarborough). Not that a firmer grasp of Kant would necessarily help Danny out of his ensuing predicament: High on the ecstasy of graduation (and the Ecstasy slipped to him by his best pal during a righteous graduation party), he picks a fight with a Will Ferrell–looking Gypsy, whose caravan has conveniently set up shop just down the beach. One drugged softcore sex interlude with his girlfriend’s come-hither pal Margie (Darla Gordon) later, Danny awakens depressed, middle-aged, unhappily married (to Margie, natch) and desperate to reclaim his lost youth. It might not seem fair to pick on this low-budget effort’s unconvincing textures (i.e., the feeble aging makeup on the principals), but The Parallel’s cheapness is also figurative. Writer-director Jack Piandaryan spares no clichés of the this-is-not-my-beautiful-house/wife mind-fuck subgenre, belaboring the actions-have-consequences theme and dully ratcheting up the melodrama (violence! Murder! Jesus poses!) to distract from the banality of the material and the obviousness of the plotting. Worse, Piandaryan’s conception of his female characters is misogynistic in both temporalities: Poor Lynn grows up to be a crazed, embittered wreck, while Margie remains a once and future slut. (Town Center 5) (Adam Nayman)

PROVOKED Jag Mundhra’s film dramatizes the real-life ordeal of Kiranjit Ahluwalia (Aishwarya Rai), an Indian housewife living in Britain who was imprisoned in 1989 for the arson murder of her abusive husband, Deepak (Naveen Andrews). We follow the uphill efforts of spunky, hip members of a women’s advocacy group, the Southall Black Sisters, to publicize Ahluwalia’s case and win her freedom — and, along the way, to establish battered-wife syndrome as an accepted legal theory. Unfortunately, syrupy music, reductive characterizations and bland cinematography turn her case into an earnest feminist fable that plays like an afterschool special for grown-ups. (Call it the anti-Longford.) Bollywood superstar Rai draws the camera to her passive beauty, but Rai’s portrayal of Ahluwalia only jerkily evolves during Hallmark moments of self-empowerment. Miranda Richardson is eminently watchable as her tough but protective white cellmate who’s also in for hubbycide. It’s a narrative that offers few meaningful conflicts and surprises, although even more shocking than Andrews’ burn makeup is the sight of Robbie Coltrane in a barrister’s wig. Rebecca Pidgeon turns in a single-note performance as Ahluwalia’s determined but ultimately inept solicitor, who somehow escapes the censure of screenwriters Carl Austin and Rahila Gupta. (Music Hall; One Colorado; Fallbrook 7) (Steven Mikulan)

THE SALON “What makes a beauty shop so great is that it really is a microcosm of society,” intones an earnest voice-over at the beginning of The Salon. Indeed. The denizens of this eponymous inner-city beauty shop, helmed by Vivica A. Fox, are a panoply of multicultural stereotypes, from a fat black woman who scarfs doughnuts to a flamboyant (but secretly insecure!) gay man to a Chinese manicurist whose mispronunciation of the word “election” is just hilarious. Most cringe inducing of all is the token white chick who insists on initiating a discussion about spanking, “or whoopin’, as you guys call it.” Or maybe it’s the “hos” who are sporadically chased across the screen by their pimp. (Where’s Al Sharpton’s decency parade when you need it?) Okay, no, I think it’s definitely the bug-eyed homeless guy who prances around outside the salon, cackling wildly and mumbling in gibberish. You get the idea. Only a heady cocktail of apathy and boredom could explain so many gratuitous girlfriends and sistas. Writer-director Mark Brown, he of the Barbershop franchise, also has an inexplicable fondness for close-ups that cut off the tops of the actors’ heads — unfortunate in a movie about hair. (Mann Chinese 6; Magic Johnson Theatres) (Julia Wallace)

THE SHORT LIFE OF JOSÉ ANTONIO GUTIERREZ The end of this German-produced documentary informs us that Hollywood has bought the rights to the life story of the titular USMC corporal, killed by friendly fire on the first day of the Iraq war, yet it’s hard to see how anything uplifting could be made from his 28 years of hardship. Born into Guatemalan poverty, the glue-sniffing street kid was briefly sheltered in a well-run orphanage, then traveled 2,000 miles alone — riding the rails on Mexico’s notorious Tren de la Muerte — to the U.S. border. Crossing over at age 22, he passed for 16, being so small and malnourished and suffering from TB. After foster care and high school, he decided on the Marines as his ticket to citizenship (thanks to a 2000 act of Congress), and became a so-called Green Card Soldier, one of more than 30,000 in the military today. A few letters to his sister and family photos are the only direct evidence of Gutierrez here. And though director Heidi Specogna adds interviews and contemporary scenes from Guatemala, her subject sadly never comes to life. You’re left marveling at Gutierrez’s determination, but it’s hard to mourn such an enigma. (Grande 4-Plex) (Brian Miller)

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