HARK!
I hear…uncomfortable laughter…
Nicolas Cage and Matt Damon – though in different ways – are hilarious in their new movies.
Unfortunately, they’re both acting in stone-faced, would-be (wood-be?) dramas.
Clint Eastwood is also funny-in-a-bad-way in his latest and perhaps last flick.
Cage’s “Pig,” Damon’s “Stillwater” and Eastwood’s “Cry Macho” are all playing in movie theaters and, thanks to the magic of early-streaming, at a screen near your living room. (The first two on Prime; Eastwood on HBO Max.)
Advice: Keep your money in the piggy bank.
And this is someone who is a fan of all three…well, Damon less so, although he won me over with his killer Judge Kavanaugh sketch on “Saturday Night Live.” “Good Will Hunting” makes my stomach turn and I shy away from his action and heavy-drama attempts, but I thought he was terrifically creepy-funny in “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “The Informant” and “Suburbicon.”
Anything that doesn’t require heavy lifting.
“Stillwater” demands Damon to carry it – and you can see how hard he’s working. Always a bad sign…
Tom McCarthy, the director of the brilliant, under-the-radar “The Station Agent,” hacks away at a big-budget “crime drama,” here. Unfortunately, McCarthy and Damon lack the courage for a go-for-broke comedy, despite the perfect setup: An oil-rig “roughneck” (and, likely, redneck) repeatedly goes to Marseille to visit a daughter in prison.
Here's the hugely-funny: Damon’s Bill Baker goes around speaking English like he’s ordering a six-pack back in Oklahoma– and getting pissed off when people don’t understand him! This would have been great, if played for laughs, but it’s all just glossed over as McCarthy grimly deeps deep on this Amanda Knox-off.
Even so, it doesn’t start off too terribly, moving along fairly crisply – until Baker decides to move to France. What should have been a 90-minute thriller bloats to a two-and-a-half-hour clunker.
Halfway in, you realize it’s like global warming: It keeps getting worse and worse, but there’s little you can do about it…
As for the Cage flick, it’s your basic, “Chef meets pig; Chef loses pig; Chef tries to win pig back” story.
Again, would be side-splitting, if played the right way.
And, considering it blends in the gourmet-food scene of a certain Northwest city, it screams: “Portlandia!”
But no, it’s grim, all the way. Even Cage is served an underhand softball pitch, when his sidekick asks him why it’s so important to complete his mission, he just mumbles, “Because I love her.”
Seriously?
Where’s your “Moonstruck” vibe, bro?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji9C_R6HLvg
“I LOST MY PIG! I NEED MY PIG! JOHNNY HAS HIS PIG!"
No go.
Cage isn’t bad in this movie, he’s just…there. As if atoning for his over-the-top mad acting in years past, he underplays like he’s doing a walk through; instead of chewing the scenery, he becomes it.
In the first 15 minutes of the movie, he gets a frying pan upside his head not once but twice, then stands there and has someone repeatedly punch him in the face – until he falls down, and the little guy gets on top of him and beats him some more. (Don’t ask why, it’s nonsense.)
He doesn’t even say, “Ow.” Nor does he wipe off the blood. So, he spends the rest of the movie stumbling around Portland, bloody-faced, in search of pig. This ain’t no “Babe,” babe …
Clint Eastwood's "Cry Macho" is a great effort...to watch. Clint fans will cry "no mo'," as the ghost-looking tough guy shambles and mumbles his way through a snoozer of a flick. Time to hang up those acting boots, high? His last flick, "The Mule," was charming and fun. This is as exciting as watching a shuffleboard tournament at the local retirement home...
The supporting actors, including his little sidekick, are so amateur you might be laughing at all the wrong times.
Best actor of the bunch?
The rooster!
Other than that, it might be time for a new Clint catchphrase:
“Go ahead – make my cocoa.”