Movie reviews: House, Repo! The Genetic Opera, Also, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

MADAGASCAR: ESCAPE 2 AFRICA The 5-year-old didn’t laugh as much as his 40-year-old father, which, granted, isn’t the basis to conclude much. Then again, most of the adults at a Saturday-morning sneak preview of Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa were clearly having a better time than the wee ones, which should be expected from a film proffering Charles Darwin wisecracks, class-warfare one-liners, smoky backroom union brokering (including a monkey subbing a spark plug for a lit cigarette), and Alec Baldwin reprising his every last dick-boss role as an alpha lion with a shellacked, gray-streaked mane. The kid adored all heck out of the first movie, and, like its subversive sequel, featured the voices of Ben Stiller, Jada Pinkett Smith, David Schwimmer and Chris Rock; he didn’t have much to say about the second one, save for his fondness for the gag about the crashing plane and the penguins, the latter of whom emerged as the acting-out favorites among the pre-K crowd. Alas, a sad note as Stiller’s Alex is reunited with his parents in Africa — the dad is played by the late Bernie Mac, whose performance ranks among his richest. On a happier note: Sacha Baron Cohen’s King Julien has an expanded role, while Rock’s zebra, who isn’t as special as he thinks, provides a kids movie with a thoughtful moral about fitting in and standing out. Funniest movie of ’08? Close enough, for those who don’t mind monkeying around. (Citywide) (Robert Wilsonky)

P.J. This tale of a psychiatric patient called P.J. (played by an unconvincing Howard Nash), who doesn’t know his own name, doesn’t know how he wound up in the hospital but somehow holds the fate of a dying child in his mysteriously burned hands, would be a stretch even as a brief story arc in a particularly sappy episode of ER. As a 90-minute feature, it borders on preposterous, as Emilio Iasiello and Mark McQuown’s screenplay pads this would-be-uplifting fable with faux-moralizing (courtesy of a flat, poorly directed John Heard as a doctor who’s lost his faith), lame subplots (like Vincent “Big Pussy” Pastore as a male nurse who can’t help losing at the race track) and unabashed hokum: A better title would have been Miracles in a Mental Ward. First-time director Russ Emanuel’s unsteady hand with actors and crude mise-en-scène exacerbates the already amateurish vibe. Fans of TV esoterica may enjoy spotting the Gym Teacher from The Wonder Years (Robert Picardo) or the now-teenage “Pepsi Girl” (Hallie Kate Eisenberg) in small roles, but this drippy medical melodrama has little to offer other than making General Hospital seem like a pinnacle of nuance and artistry. (Grande 4-Plex) (James C. Taylor)

Role Models

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• Lisa Ray
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• Bernie Mac
• Ryan Harper

REPO! THE GENETIC OPERA Based on a campy sci-fi/horror rock opera first staged in Toronto in 2002, Repo! is also an offshoot of the slash-mash-gash Saw franchise that’s made gazillions for Lionsgate — it’s directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, youthful helmer of Saws II, III and IV. No diabolical torture machines here, unless you read Repo! as a cautionary essay on the perils of the credit economy. A half-century from now, humanity has been decimated by a plague and gone surgery-mad, with desperate survivors buying replacement internal organs from the GeneCo on credit, and scalpel-wielding repo men chasing down deadbeats to reclaim the company’s transplants. Two interlocking family dramas are played out amid the murky clutter of exploitable bodies. A brooding Sweeney Todd type (Anthony Stewart Head) does GeneCo’s bloody business in order to provide medicine for his sickly goth-girl daughter. Meanwhile, the unscrupulous plutocratic head of GeneCo (Paul Sorvino) attempts to rule his spiritually or physically degenerate offspring — among them Paris Hilton. Repo! is a movie of wildly enthusiastic Grand Guignol gross-outs. It’s also entirely sung through, mainly in a persistent belting whine. The whole gaudy miasma reaches its climax with the entire cast converging on the local opera house, West Side Story–style. The grim finality of the ensuing pietà suggests the last act of Hamlet or, rather, Hamlet 2 — so embarrassing that, for the first time, I wanted to avert my eyes from the screen, although that might have been because Repo! appears to have been shot with a cell phone. (Sunset 5; Playhouse 7) (J. Hoberman)

GO ROLE MODELS In every way, this is just another formulaic romp about two selfish slackers getting their priorities rearranged by a couple of kids — instead of breaking new ground, it polishes it with sandpaper. As reps for an energy-drink company, Paul Rudd and Seann William Scott are going nowhere — except to the schools where they pitch their product’s buzz as an acceptable substitute for illegal drugs. Wheeler (Scott) loves the gig, despite the Minotaur costume in which he does his five shows daily for smart-ass kids who wonder if he got the cow outfit at the gay zoo. Then company suit and spokesman Danny (Rudd) chooses the occasion of his break-up with longtime girlfriend Beth (Elizabeth Banks, in what amounts to little more than extended cameo) to sabotage their slacker gigs by running their monster truck up a school’s statuary. For that crime of stupidity (among others), Wheeler and Danny are offered a choice: Go to jail for a month or mentor two boys (Bobb’e J. Thompson, Christopher Mintz-Plasse) in a Big Brothers–type organization called Sturdy Wings, run by a rather unsteady former coke whore played by Jane Lynch. The inevitable transpires: Men who’d behaved like boys begin acting their age, and boys who’d been left to fend for themselves stop acting out. It’s been the plot of every other Adam Sandler movie — potty humor gets a hug. But Wain, Marino and Rudd pull it off because theirs is a funnier, brainier, bawdier brand of feel-good ... and because you can never go wrong with a climactic, foam-padded sword fight set to KISS. For the full version of this review, go to www.laweekly.com/movies. (Citywide) (Robert Wilonsky)