30 CHICAGO READER | JUNE 10, 2005 | SECTION ONE
Reviews
a
30
REVIEWS BY
JONATHAN
ROSENBAUM
Theater
Alex Kotlowitz’s
Mr. and Mrs. Smith,
The Adventures of
Sharkboy & Lavagirl in 3-D,
Howl’s Moving Castle,
and Cinderella Man
Movies
An
Unobstructed
View
REVIEW BY KELLY KLEIMAN
HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE ssss
DIRECTED AND WRITTEN BY HAYAO MIYAZAKI
WITH THE VOICES OF JEAN SIMMONS, CHRISTIAN BALE,
LAUREN BACALL, BLYTHE DANNER,
EMILY MORTIMER, JOSH HUTCHERSON,
AND BILLY CRYSTAL
THE ADVENTURES OF SHARKBOY & LAVAGIRL IN 3-D ss
DIRECTED BY ROBERT RODRIGUEZ
WRITTEN BY RODRIGUEZ AND RACER RODRIGUEZ
WITH CAYDEN BOYD, TAYLOR DOOLEY, TAYLOR LAUTNER,
GEORGE LOPEZ, JACOB DAVICH, DAVID ARQUETTE,
AND KRISTIN DAVIS
MR. AND MRS. SMITH ●
DIRECTED BY DOUG LIMAN
WRITTEN BY SIMON KINBERG
WITH BRAD PITT, ANGELINA JOLIE,
VINCE VAUGHN, ADAM BRODY,
KERRY WASHINGTON, AND KEITH DAVID
a
34
RATINGS
ssss MASTERPIECE
sss A MUST SEE
ss WORTH SEEING
s HAS REDEEMING FACET
WORTHLESS
•
Where the Kids Are
What could be more fun than Brad Pitt and Angelia Jolie
trying to kill each other? A castle that walks, for one.
By Jonathan Rosenbaum
ometimes movies earmarked for kids are a lot
more nuanced, sophisticated, and mature than the ones
that are allegedly for grown-ups.
As a nonparent, I often avoid PG
fare, but Howl’s Moving Castle
and The Adventures of Sharkboy
& Lavagirl in 3-D suggest that
maybe I shouldn’t. Conversely,
during the two long hours of Mr.
and Mrs. Smith, a deeply stupid
and offensive action comedyromance, I kept feeling I was
being addressed as an obnoxious,
heartless, and nihilistic gradeschool brat.
Admittedly, Angelina Jolie in a
dominatrix outfit breaking the
neck of a wealthy client isn’t preteen fare, which is presumably
why Mr. and Mrs. Smith is rated
PG-13. But you have to be jaded
to imagine anyone over 12 enjoying this. The studio must have
reasoned that Jolie and Brad Pitt
are movie stars, so anything they
do would be seen as fun and
attractive—and what could be
more fun and attractive than
their trying to kill each other
and just about everybody else in
the movie? According to Simon
Kinberg’s infantile script—originally written as an MFA thesis
at Columbia University and not
in any way a remake of the
1941 Alfred Hitchcock comedy
with the same title—the two
have been married for five or
six years, each unaware that the
other is working secretly as
an assassin for a rival organization until they’re assigned to
S
Howl’s Moving Castle
bump each other off.
Maybe Kinberg and director
Doug Liman were trying to be
satiric, but the results are strictly
generic. The only major character besides the Smiths is Pitt’s
wimpy boss (Vince Vaughn), and
no matter how many thoughtless
murders the Smiths commit or
how many lies they tell we’re
supposed to slobber over them as
if they were deities. By contrast,
every character in Howl’s
Moving Castle—derived from an
English novel by Diana Wynne
Jones—is both lovable and seriously flawed, and though a war
does rage around them, the only
villains are the faceless forces on
both sides that keep it going.
T
here are heroes as well as villains in Robert Rodriguez’s
Sharkboy & Lavagirl, written
with his son Racer, but the movie
is mainly about a boy named
Max (Cayden Boyd) whose overactive imagination gets him in
trouble. The title characters and
the 3-D sections, set mainly on
the planet Drool, are products of
Max’s fantasies, though the characters are based on people at his
home and school. As in The
Wizard of Oz and The 5,000
Fingers of Dr. T., we encounter
both the twisted dream characters and the original models.
Sharkboy & Lavagirl can be
obvious, as when a defense of the
imagination quickly becomes
preachy. People who’ve seen
Rodriguez’s Spy Kids movies may
find the tacky, low-budget effects
suggesting a kind of Kmart surrealism a bit worn, along with
his nonviolent scenario; nothing’s scary, and everything’s so
light it’s on the verge of evaporating. Yet I’m still charmed by
Rodriguez’s low-tech, antistudio
ideology, a mainstay of his best
work since the 1993 El mariachi.
The landscape and weather on
Drool consist largely of literary
conceits and puns writ large—a
KEVIN HORAN
Movies
CHICAGO READER | JUNE 10, 2005 | SECTION ONE 31
The Adventures of Sharkboy & Lavagirl in 3-D, Mr. and Mrs. Smith
Stream of Consciousness flowing
through a land of milk and giant
cookies, a Train of Thought that
keeps jumping off its tracks, a
brainstorm attack, a banana split
boat. Underlying everything is an
unabashedly Luddite vision in
which electricity is the villain—in
the form of Mr. Electricity
(George Lopez), a transmogrified
version of Max’s teacher Mr.
Electricidad, hobbling around on
mechanical legs.
T
he castle in Howl’s Moving
Castle is a weirdly animated
amalgam of thing, creature, and
place. So is much of the rest of
Hayao Miyazaki’s wonderful
movie—whether it’s a flame
named Calcifer (the voice of Billy
Crystal), a scarecrow named
Turnip, the endless stretch of
steps leading to the royal palace,
or a spectacular paradisiacal
meadow. Everything and everyone is undergoing perpetual
transformation in this enchanted
universe, where magical spells
serve either to clarify or to conceal certain traits but people,
things, and places persist.
Most radically changed is
Sophie, the heroine, who’s
transformed by the obese Witch
of the Waste (Lauren Bacall)
from a withdrawn 18-year-old
hatmaker (Emily Mortimer)
into Grandma Sophie (Jean
sloppy if handsome cartoon
prince, goes from being a brash
warrior to an angry pacifist
while periodically sprouting
wings and undergoing other
physical transformations.
Miyazaki, now in his mid-60s,
did the same thing, bringing
back images from dreams I’d
long forgotten—dreams of distant lands and immense aerial
vistas. I can’t swear these were
dreams I had as a kid, but it’s
irrelevant, because in some way
I’m less concerned about kids anywhere
finding joy in Howl’s Moving Castle than I am
about American adults who worry about
the absence of clear-cut heroes and villains.
Simmons), the castle’s takecharge housekeeper. Grandma
Sophie’s romantic feelings for
Howl (Christian Bale), the
young wizard and master of the
moving castle, periodically
make her look 18 again—to us
and to herself, if not to the other
characters. The greedy Witch of
the Waste, who’s made herself
young, is returned to senile old
age as a punishment, but then
she’s unexpectedly adopted and
even indulged by the household
of the moving castle. Howl, a
has a refreshing and persuasive
way of relating youth to old age
and callowness to wisdom.
Rather than presenting them
succeeding each other and fighting for supremacy, he shows
them coexisting peacefully. And
he does this with characters so
nuanced and real one keeps discovering new things about them
at every turn.
A recent daylong reunion of
my grammar-school class gave
me back a few flashes of myself
as a child. Howl’s Moving Castle
we’re always children when we
dream. And as adults we’re
always rediscovering and revising our childhood—which is
related to why Grandma Sophie
keeps recovering her 18-year-old
self and then teaching that self a
thing or two.
According to Richard James
Havis in The Hollywood
Reporter, Howl’s Moving Castle
has already made $192 million
in Japan, yet its success in the
U.S. is uncertain. “Plotting is so
multifaceted that it will confuse
children,” he writes, “and it lacks
the clear-cut heroes and villains
typical of animation.” Does this
mean he thinks Japanese children are more sophisticated
and less easily confused than
American children? Or that the
$192 million paid for just
Japanese grown-ups?
I’m less concerned about kids
anywhere finding joy in this
movie than I am about American
adults who worry about the
absence of clear-cut heroes and
villains. Especially if they think
the ones like those in Mr. and Mr.
Smith are preferable—as so many
Hollywood honchos apparently
do. Those honchos often claim to
be taking their cues from
American audiences, but I suspect more and more that this is a
ruse. I suspect they make movies
like Mr. and Mrs. Smith because,
whether they realize it or not,
they hate us and want to see their
worst assumptions about us confirmed. The uncommon respect
shown both kids and adults in
Howl’s Moving Castle—and its
distaste for violence and war—is
an ideal rebuttal. v