Weekly round-up

>> Cheadle and Sandler move in the
melancholy Reign Over Me, and kids get superhuman powers in The Last Mimzy

DARK AND FUNNY: Reign Over Me

by MALCOLM FRASER

Reign Over Me

Cheadle is great as always, and Sandler shows that Punch Drunk Love wasn’t just a fluke in exploiting his latent dramatic abilities. He not only captures Charlie’s repressed turmoil, but keeps the character’s dignity even when he’s playing for laughs. Plus, his comic delivery is actually funny, bringing some relief to what’s at heart a very sad story.

The film takes a dark, melancholy turn about halfway through and more or less stays on that note, which is surprising for a mainstream movie but in this case feels much truer to the material. It’s not pulled off perfectly: it drags a bit at over two hours, the women characters are insufficiently fleshed out, and Binder sadly feels the need to throw in a few montages scored with bad white-bread pop songs. FILM Weekly round-up Cheadle and Sandler move in the melancholy Reign Over Me, and kids get superhuman powers in The Last Mimzy But thanks to the cast and Binder’s avoidance of narrative clichés, all in all, it’s a solid and genuinely moving story. (MF)

WEIRD SCIENCE: The Last Mimzy

The Last Mimzy

In this peculiar children’s tale, a brother and sister find some strange toys washed up on a beach; the toys turn out to be robotic messengers from the future that give the kids superhuman intelligence and mystical powers. Their parents (Timothy Hutton and Joely Richardson) and a hippie-dippy teacher (Rainn Wilson of the American Office series) start to suspect that something is up with their offspring’s newfound ability to dematerialize objects and design interdimensional portals; when they set off a citywide blackout, the kids’ powers also attract the interest of a Homeland Security agent (The Green Mile’s Michael Clarke Duncan).

The film is a return to directing for Bob Shaye, the New Line Films executive and Lords of the Rings producer, and the result is surprisingly original considering it’s directed by a corporate honcho. The story is refreshingly smart and unpredictable within the kids’ film genre, and the kids themselves (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn and Chris O’Neil) way exceed expectations from the usual treacly-cute performances of their peers; their banter and bickering actually rings true for anyone with a sibling.

Set in Seattle, the film has a definite left-coast vibe, and the fact that the kids stare into spinning kaleidoscopic patterns that expand their minds will surely get the family values crowd’s knickers in a knot. But if you don’t mind your kids enjoying subtle propaganda for hallucinogenic drugs, The Last Mimzy has more brains, heart and genuine entertainment value than a bucketload of generic digitally animated family fare. (MF)

WHITE HERO! Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace

Everyone always loves to take our friendly U.S. neighbours to task over their history of slavery. Of course, the colonial powers we descend from also engaged in the slave trade—they just abolished it earlier. Amazing Grace tells the story of the 18th-century British abolitionist movement, focusing on a crusading member of parliament named William Wilberforce, and the struggles he faced taking on the establishment over the well-institutionalized and profitable traffic in slaves.

Ioan Gruffudd, previously noted for the Fantastic Four movie, plays Wilberforce with all the appropriate righteous indignation and dogooder’s angst. The cast is chock-ablock with solid British thespians, both veteran (Michael Gambon, Albert Finney) and relatively freshfaced (Rufus Sewell, Infamous’s Toby Jones). Longstanding journeyman director Michael Apted, who’s as comfortable making the Up documentary series as he is helming a James Bond flick or episodic TV, has his directorial craft down pat: While Amazing Grace has no trace of innovation either narratively or stylistically, Apted hits all the right dramatic notes while keeping the cheese factor to a respectable minimum.

Some might be left with a slight discomfort at the fact that this abolitionist drama shows only fleeting depictions of slave life, and features exactly one black character (a freed slave played by African singer Youssou N’Dour). As such, it’s another film about noble rich white people heroically helping the oppressed; a film that seems to want its audience to congratulate ourselves on how far we’ve come, rather than reflect on slavery’s legacy and its echoes today. (MF)

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