Philadelphia Weekly

New Releases

Breakfast With Scot
Directed by Laurie Lynd
C-
Reviewed by Matt Prigge
Opens Fri., Oct. 31

Chances are if a movie character is introduced as a miserable prick he or she is about to inherit an adorable kid. And so it goes with the wan Canadian dramedy Breakfast With Scot, whose star is a gay but not yet outed hockey player-turned-sportcaster (Ed's Tom Cavanagh) with a volcanically obnoxious and smarmy disposition. Clearly this jerk's madly in love with himself, and yet he's in a long-term relationship with a boring lawyer (the very talented Ben Shenkman, working with next to nothing).

The plot gods see fit to burden the pair with Scot (Noah Bernett), the 11-year-old son of Shenkman's brother's ex-girlfriend. When she ODs in South America, they're left with the saucer-eyed Bennett, much to Cavanagh's wearying disapproval. If you've seen Three Men and a Baby, Big Daddy, Kolya or any of the other thousand movies where central casting twerps de-asshole an asshole and teach him the value of optimism and niceness and all that horseshit, you can basically write the movie yourself, and will likely wish you had as you're probably far funnier and more creative than screenwriter Sean Reycraft.

Breakfast With Scot's lone twist is that scruffy-haired Scot is considerably swishy--prone to bright primary-colored clothing accessorized with poodle belts. He's also in love with musicals and given to such outre affectations as spelling his Christian name funkily. Will he inadvertently help Cavanagh publicly step out of the closet? As if that question, or any, were even worth positing.

Director Laurie Lynd's film predictably met with protest during production when local knucklescraping conservatives robotically hemmed and hawed over promotion of the gay agenda and yadda yadda. Such martyr-making acts only serve to heap valor onto a film that deserves to be commended for its progressive politics and literally nothing else.

Cavanagh remains an unlikable yutz even after he's melted, losing the mean streak but not the smarm. And while this whole affair predictably climaxes in a thumb-twiddlingly protracted custody battle, that's not before the film makes a calculated shift from light, self-impressed comedy to material far too dark and serious for it to handle. If only the film's protestors had been picketing its mediocrity.

What Just Happened
Directed by Barry Levinson
D-
Reviewed by Sean Burns
Opens Fri., Oct. 31

For as long as folks have been making movies, they've also been making movies about making movies. But there's a common problem running through Tinseltown's frequent examinations of its own belly-button lint: The films depicted onscreen never remotely resemble anything anybody in their right mind would ever want to see.

What Just Happened began as an amusing tell-all book by producer Art Linson, who detailed his difficulties sneaking Fight Club past a major studio's horrified executives and also dishing some delightful dirt regarding Alec Baldwin's diva misbehavior on the set of David Mamet's Glengarry Glen Bear epic The Edge. What makes the book a worthwhile read is that these were both terrific pictures, oddball endeavors that Linson had to carefully maneuver around the Hollywood assembly line.

The movie version, scripted by Linson himself, stars Robert De Niro as an exasperated producer who, as far as we can tell, is responsible for nothing but garbage. Instead of the fascinating Fight Club controversy, we get an arthouse downer starring Sean Penn (riffing on his miserable reputation quite nicely) and directed by an English drug addict (Michael Wincott) who insists his masterpiece must end with a dead dog's brains splattered all over the lens. It's impossible to imagine anything like this ever coming within a mile of a major studio, but nonetheless here's our production exec (Catherine Keener, playing a bitch again) demanding a new ending. De Niro frets.

Well, De Niro frets as much as it's possible for De Niro to fret these days. He's grown so lackadaisical and reticent onscreen that he spends What Just Happened grimacing and shrugging his shoulders, registering "manic" as if suffering a mild case of indigestion. The actor puts so little into his performances lately, I think I work harder just sitting through them.

Bruce Willis (sending up his miserable reputation cloddishly and to little comic effect) plays the Baldwin role, showing up for a shoot fat and wearing a ridiculous beard. He kicks over tables, shouting obscenities. De Niro frets again, even wheezier.

By this point one must wonder how, in this day and age, anybody invested millions of dollars in a major motion picture that hinges upon the intensely gripping drama of a half-assed Robert De Niro trying to talk Bruce Willis into shaving.

This is why people secretly wish California would just fall into the ocean. Well, this and Entourage.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Directed by Kevin Smith
B
Reviewed by Matt Prigge
Opens Fri., Oct. 31

Perhaps because he was as embarrassed by Clerks II as the rest of us, Kevin Smith jettisoned his own rotating cast of regular players and borrowed headliners from Judd Apatow for Zack and Miri Make a Porno--which, not coincidentally, is Smith's first decent film since the late '90s. (In fact, I'd say it's his best since the woefully underrated Mallrats.)