Chris Knipp
04-27-2007, 04:44 PM
Jon Kasdan: In the Land of Women
Carter Webb should go to White Castle
Review by Chris Knipp
This new film starring Adam Brody of TV's "The OC" might win some kind of prize for sweet wishy-washiness were it not for the feisty grandma played by Olympia Dukakis -- an attempt to achieve "edge" that will, however, be instantly blown away if you watch a couple minutes of the late, great Nancy Marchand playing Tony Soprano's deadly mom. A well-meaning effort with scenes punctuated by lite rock, In the Land of Women is essentially about Adam Brody, a rangy young man of undeniable charm who resembles the young Tom Hanks -- except that he's cuter -- and has a lot less to do here than Hanks did in his early films. Meg Ryan is "taking her first cautious baby steps in a maternal, older-woman mode and maintaining her footing," Stephen Holden of the NYTimes says. But Ryan maintains her "footing" by simply acting the same starry-eyed blonde she's always been, albeit with a serious challenge to face (breast cancer--but all is well by film's end). Ryan looks like Brody's older sister, not a Mrs. Robinson, and the comparisons to The Graduate seem hard to credit. A few walks and a kiss do not a sexual coming of age make, but anyway Carter Webb (Brody's über-WASP name in the film), being 26 in 2007, doesn't need an intro to sex. He's had that earlier, doubtless long before the relationship with Latina movie starlet Sophia (Elena Anaya) whose termination is the plot's ho-hum beginning.
Being a LA movie brat like his brother Jake, Jon Kasdan makes Carter a marginal film writer (of soft-core porn) born and raised in LA. When Sophia dumps him he goes to Michigan to watch over his putatively senile grandmother (or is she just preternaturally blunt? the screenplay isn't altogether sure), escape from the source of his love pain, and maybe write the novel about his high school life that he's been futzing around with for over a decade. Who should be grandma's neighbor but Meg, here called Sarah Hardwicke, with a sexy blonde daughter, an adulterous husband, and a potentially tragic illness, just discovered? (Cancer: can a story like this go anywhere unsentimental with that?)
From his weepy intro when he gets the gate from Sophia in a diner, Carter is nothing but a teddy bear, so it's appropriate that the novel he finally completes has "teddy bear" in the title.
The "land of women" in question consists of Ryan and her character's two daughters, an inarticulate, put-upon teenager (Lucy: Kristen Stewart) and a prematurely wise younger sister (Paige: Makenzie Vega). And of course grandma Dukakis, whose words of unexpected wisdom are overshadowed by her repeated assertions that she is about to die. Dukakis' Phyllis is a shtick that never quite comes off. Is this really Michigan? All we know is the neighborhood is upper-bourgeois and that Meg's front yard contains masses of flowers in full bloom it would take a team of half a dozen full time gardeners to maintain. It could just as well be New Jersey.
John Hughes and The Breakfast Club are mentioned -- a fatal mistake. Everything in this bland, well-meaning effort crumbles when compared to the livelier (and incidentally smarter) youth pictures of the Eighties, just as the fumbling plot line and clumsy hero pale in the light of Mike Nichol's seminal, razor-sharp Graduate. Perhaps Carter needs a posse of equally stymied contemporaries like the young men in Muccino's The Last Kiss to make this interesting. A Land of Fumbling Young Men might at least have room for more jokes. The film's only moments come in the interactions between Brody and Ryan, but they're only moments of possibility, not achievement. Why does Carter Webb run into a tree while jogging? Why does he get knocked down by Lucy's footballer boyfriend? Only to give him something to do. But he isn't going anywhere -- except back to Hollywood. This is not a terrible movie; it's just a feeble one.
Carter Webb should go to White Castle
Review by Chris Knipp
This new film starring Adam Brody of TV's "The OC" might win some kind of prize for sweet wishy-washiness were it not for the feisty grandma played by Olympia Dukakis -- an attempt to achieve "edge" that will, however, be instantly blown away if you watch a couple minutes of the late, great Nancy Marchand playing Tony Soprano's deadly mom. A well-meaning effort with scenes punctuated by lite rock, In the Land of Women is essentially about Adam Brody, a rangy young man of undeniable charm who resembles the young Tom Hanks -- except that he's cuter -- and has a lot less to do here than Hanks did in his early films. Meg Ryan is "taking her first cautious baby steps in a maternal, older-woman mode and maintaining her footing," Stephen Holden of the NYTimes says. But Ryan maintains her "footing" by simply acting the same starry-eyed blonde she's always been, albeit with a serious challenge to face (breast cancer--but all is well by film's end). Ryan looks like Brody's older sister, not a Mrs. Robinson, and the comparisons to The Graduate seem hard to credit. A few walks and a kiss do not a sexual coming of age make, but anyway Carter Webb (Brody's über-WASP name in the film), being 26 in 2007, doesn't need an intro to sex. He's had that earlier, doubtless long before the relationship with Latina movie starlet Sophia (Elena Anaya) whose termination is the plot's ho-hum beginning.
Being a LA movie brat like his brother Jake, Jon Kasdan makes Carter a marginal film writer (of soft-core porn) born and raised in LA. When Sophia dumps him he goes to Michigan to watch over his putatively senile grandmother (or is she just preternaturally blunt? the screenplay isn't altogether sure), escape from the source of his love pain, and maybe write the novel about his high school life that he's been futzing around with for over a decade. Who should be grandma's neighbor but Meg, here called Sarah Hardwicke, with a sexy blonde daughter, an adulterous husband, and a potentially tragic illness, just discovered? (Cancer: can a story like this go anywhere unsentimental with that?)
From his weepy intro when he gets the gate from Sophia in a diner, Carter is nothing but a teddy bear, so it's appropriate that the novel he finally completes has "teddy bear" in the title.
The "land of women" in question consists of Ryan and her character's two daughters, an inarticulate, put-upon teenager (Lucy: Kristen Stewart) and a prematurely wise younger sister (Paige: Makenzie Vega). And of course grandma Dukakis, whose words of unexpected wisdom are overshadowed by her repeated assertions that she is about to die. Dukakis' Phyllis is a shtick that never quite comes off. Is this really Michigan? All we know is the neighborhood is upper-bourgeois and that Meg's front yard contains masses of flowers in full bloom it would take a team of half a dozen full time gardeners to maintain. It could just as well be New Jersey.
John Hughes and The Breakfast Club are mentioned -- a fatal mistake. Everything in this bland, well-meaning effort crumbles when compared to the livelier (and incidentally smarter) youth pictures of the Eighties, just as the fumbling plot line and clumsy hero pale in the light of Mike Nichol's seminal, razor-sharp Graduate. Perhaps Carter needs a posse of equally stymied contemporaries like the young men in Muccino's The Last Kiss to make this interesting. A Land of Fumbling Young Men might at least have room for more jokes. The film's only moments come in the interactions between Brody and Ryan, but they're only moments of possibility, not achievement. Why does Carter Webb run into a tree while jogging? Why does he get knocked down by Lucy's footballer boyfriend? Only to give him something to do. But he isn't going anywhere -- except back to Hollywood. This is not a terrible movie; it's just a feeble one.