Better Than it Should Be? That’s The Dilemma

Vaughn and James Wring Some Depth Out of Their Latest Comedy

Vince Vaughn and Kevin James latest, The Dilemma, will leave with your own quandary: Is this movie really that good or am I just lying to myself? Truthfully, that’s not a terrible dilemma, and neither is this unexpectedly deep comedy about one man’s tortured attempt to keep a secret that could ruin much more than a friendship.

Vaughn and James play longtime friends and business partners, Ronny and Nick, on the verge of their big breaks, romantically and professionally. As the two work on an electric engine with bite for Chrysler that could change their business fortunes, Ronny, inspired by Nick’s wedded bliss with wife Geneva (Winona Ryder), is gearing up to propose to girlfriend Beth (Jennifer Connelly). Complications arise when Ronny catches Geneva playing cougar to Channing Tatum’s tattooed bad boy, Zip. Hi-jinks and heartbreak ensue as Ronny struggles with telling Nick the devastating truth and risking the Chrysler deal.

Director Ron Howard—or at least Universal’s marketing department—pulled a nifty bait and switch with The Dilemma. What was clearly marketed as another Vaughn frat buddy vehicle, with James stepping in for Owen Wilson, is actually a mildly heart-wrenching, and occasionally riotous, study of the psychological, and physical, stress associated with keeping secrets that threaten the delicate nature of relationships, platonic and romantic.

Vaughn truly carries the film, portraying a man besieged by a secret he doesn’t want to keep. He still delivers his trademark snide insults—as well as a punishing amount of physical comedy when he tousles with Tatum in the film’s funniest, yet oddly violent scene—but the majority of his performance is balancing the jokes with a little more pathos than expected. While Vaughn hits most of the dramatic notes, particularly when showing exasperation over his duplicity, he doesn’t dig as deep as he could, often bailing for a joke instead of showing too much genuine agony.

With Vaughn carrying the comedic and dramatic load, James is left to play straight man and victim. Admittedly, it’s strange to see James in a role devoid of pratfalls, but he plays Nick with an equal measure of naivete and anxiousness, as a man beset by career anxiety while wholly unaware of his wife’s duplicity. James lets Nick’s good-natured gullibility sink in so deep that audiences will still feel a bit blindsided at the denouement, despite knowing exactly what’s coming. Winona Ryder takes another turn as a deplorable character playing Nick’s philandering wife without complexity until the final frames. Connelly plays a compassionate counterpoint to Ryder’s spiteful shrew with a low-key turn as Vaughn’s supportive girlfriend. Connelly may not have much to do, but at least she gives the role a dignity that eludes most contemporary female comedic leads.

Ron Howard does a fine job of pushing these actors just beyond their comfort zones—some much more than others—giving them characters with a little dirt on them who are constantly forced to suppress their personal and professional secrets. The understated confrontations, and subsequent confessions, between Vaughn and Connelly alone give the Dilemma more depth than it deserves.

Despite surprising depth and strong performances, there are notable missteps particularly with supporting actors who are grossly underused—Queen Latifah and Tatum in particular—the lack of comedic material for James, and the wall-banging reluctance of the characters to just fess up, already! Even worse is the amount of jokes that face plant from launch. The audience sat without so much as chuckling for most of the film’s two hours, largely due to a stream of tired Vince Vaughn jokes buried under the weight of the drama. Flat jokes and missed opportunities aside, the Dilemma is a real surprise, especially with its dreaded January release date, offering more emotion than laughs and showing viewers something they haven’t seen from Vaughn since his turn in The Break-Up: range.

The Dearth of Our Imagination

I returned from my first pilgrimage to Comic-Con inspired, but broken-hearted.

Comic-con was every inch the spectacle of legend. The central exhibition hall of the San Diego Convention Center, a two-block long cage of white-washed steel and glass, was crowded from wall to pillar to post to wall with an ocean of ‘geeks,’ children, tourists, stars, creators and drag-a-longs. The crowds clamored, pushed and tugged beneath towering displays of supersized mechas and movie posters, grabbing and snatching at every free trinket or toy tossed in their general direction. The hallways above the exhibition hall were congested with snaking lines that wrapped around, inside and outside the convention center. Hall H alone was a staggering, humbling sight. The cavernous hall, housing more seats than a small theater, barely contained crowds of thousands who waited hours with baited breath, and sharpened pencils, to squint at the movie stars of the month and gaze at sizzle reels. Among those crowds, the brown and, especially, the black faces were easily outnumbered by what seemed to be a 100 to 1 ratio.

For two days, my girlfriend and I squeezed through the stifling crowds, sliding between bodies to grab swag and wearing out the soles of our feet for a chance to see our favorite TV stars from 300 yards away. As we shimmied through the crowds and stood in ridiculously long lines, I noticed how rare a sight we were. In a moment like this, my girlfriend’s brother would pose the terribly clichéd inquiry, “How does it feel to be the pepper in the salt shaker?” My typical response would be to let the question hang until the silence becomes too awkward to continue any conversation. But this time, I would’ve answered, “lonely and discouraging.” Sure, attendees of myriad ethnicities attended Comic-Con. The diversity of California’s population practically demands it. But, among the rainbow of attendees, people of African descent were notoriously underrepresented. As bad as it seemed, the dearth of black creators and talent was even more distressing.

The minimal presence of black artists at Comic-Con was enough to make one ask, “Do we have any imagination?” Personally, I wondered: Where were the representatives of Aaron McGruder’s Boondocks—a series steeped in as equal doses of pop culture lexicon to rival Scott Pilgrim—? Who was present to discuss DC Comics Milestone Line—one of the most influential collection of African-American superhero creations—? I know we are capable of contemplating and conjuring the same feats imagination as creators of any other culture—despite having less money in many cases—but looking across the exhibit hall would prove that assertion wrong. I passed maybe four or five booths, out of hundreds, with black artists and, even more depressing, maybe one or two booths with black-owned properties. Of the two booths displaying black-owned properties I saw, one was a cheaply-made comic with poorly rendered superhero archetypes and the other was a clear Boondocks knock off, complete with brown-skinned anime characters. Generally, this type of creativity is inoffensive and tolerable, but, in a room where creativity is bursting at the seems, a couple of derivative projects with brown and black characters weren’t going to draw much attention. Perhaps the best example of dismal black attendance on either side of the Comic-Con fence came in the last minutes of our last day at the convention. My girlfriend and I were making our final rounds on the exhibit floor, minutes before the doors were to close, when a stocky black man with a immaculate ‘fro and a wide collared shirt over a canary yellow suit caught sight of us. I saw him approaching out the corner of my eye, hoping he wasn’t some suit trying to drag us to a preview of some hackneyed project like No Ordinary Family or The Cape. Instead, he politely blocked our path and asked “Do you guys know Jim Kelly?” Of course, I knew the legendary Jim Kelly from Enter the Dragon and Three the Hard Way. Since the question was obviously directed at me more than my girlfriend, I replied with a guarded enthusiasm, “Yeah.” He responded, “He’ll be here tomorrow…Come and check him out.” We nodded, feigning enthusiasm and knowing that, even if we were coming the next day, we probably wouldn’t stop to see Mr. Kelly because we’d rather catch the Marvel movie preview in Hall H.

Our apathy for black projects or seeing an aging black actor was likely informed, in some part, to the apathy our people show towards aspects of pop culture that don’t include music or sports. Despite the fact that the world is falling at the feet of the comic and video game gods, we don’t seem to care to contribute. However, we’ll gladly consume. We’ll buy movie tickets, video games, toys and a select few will purchase comics, but we rarely have a presence at the creator’s table and, at times, it seems that we don’t care to. Now, I won’t decry the hard work of the black creators who are stretching their imagination and creating uniquely creative work that demonstrates we are on par with the best creators of any color. Unfortunately, these creators are buried beneath the rappers, athletes, actors and quasi-celebrities who most of America associates with black “creativity.” Making matters worse is the reluctance of some creators, even the best, to avoid creating material so ingrained in “our” struggle that it turns off the mainstream consumer. I believe everyone should tell their story their way, but if we persist in telling stories with decaying neighborhoods, discordant romances and preachy drag queens, and we only stretch our imagination to evaluate the same issues of racism, poverty, and urban despair that have been repeated ad-hoc for decades then we risk alienating mainstream audiences who are far more engaged in the fantastic than the tragicomic. We don’t have to sacrifice the spirit of our stories and the integrity of our voices, but a little variety wouldn’t hurt. There are infinite ways to address these issues with imagination and ingenuity, from metaphor to allusion. If we, as creators, don’t embrace creative approaches to our material and start dreaming a little bigger then we’ll be stuck selling the same stories to the same people. With African-Americans making up a small percentage of the country, how far will that strategy take us?

To be fair, I’m sure a number of black creators and talent would have willingly attended Comic-Con to sell their stories and promote their projects. I’m also sure that there’s a sizable community of African-Americans and individuals of African ancestry from other countries who would love to have attended the convention as witnesses to the glut of creativity, but couldn’t for a myriad of circumstances. The truth is not everyone’s going to make the pilgrimage every year, but that shouldn’t stop those of us who love this stuff—the comics, the movies, the video games, the genre shows, the anime, etc.—from trying, at least once. And, for those of us who dare to create pop culture art or tell a wildly inventive story—myself included—it is imperative that we make the pilgrimage at some point, so that we can share our creations with an audience that will devour them without hesitation. Let’s just be sure to bring something fresh and original that will blow the geeks out of the water and show them that creators of color can dream as big and as bright as the best in the business.

The Idea of Control (INCEPTION SPOILERS AHEAD)

Regardless of one’s interpretation of Inception’s conclusion, the final minutes of the film exemplify the film’s overarching theme of control. Christopher Nolan’s dream-twisting heist flick may have audiences battling over the “truth” of the final frame, but the undeniable thematic truth is that Inception affirms the individual, conscious desire to control the uncontrollable, be it dreams, emotions or a life spiraling into the hands of fate. Inception, for all its sleek tidiness and meticulous narrative design, is essentially about taking control of the uncontrollable by letting go. Whether Leonardo DiCaprio’s Dom is in the real world or limbo by that closing shot, he decides to abandon the dreams and emotions that ruled his life and rushes to embrace his children, effectively reclaiming control of his life. Dom’s decision punctuates the theme of taking control that reverberates through every facet of Inception, from the setup to each “stage” of its climax to the dénouement.

Long before Inception’s multi-layered climax and perplexing conclusion, Nolan examines the concept of controlling the uncontrollable through co-mingling A-stories: Dom’s struggle to control “Mal” and his team’s quest to control the dreams of Fischer. Both plotlines deftly illustrate how the characters struggle and conspire to control unbound elements of the human psyche, specifically emotions and dreams. From the opening “extraction,” Dom struggles to avoid, ignore and altogether obfuscate “Mal,” the embodiment of his guilt over the death of his wife. Dom cripples his ability to perform dream-share extractions because he cannot control the grief that disturbs his subconscious. So disturbing is this grief that it emanates in the visage of his deceased wife and constantly threatens his team’s missions. Dom’s journey in Inception is as much about returning to his family as it is gaining control over a debilitating emotional handicap, in his case a devastating amount of grief. He fights with “Mal” through the duration of the film—physically, verbally and emotionally—and it is only when he faces her and embraces the irony of control—letting go in order to gain control—does he begin to conquer his emotions and escape his own personal “limbo.” By facing his emotions as an addict does an addiction that has overrun their life—by confronting and releasing the source of the pain—Dom achieves a semblance of control over a seemingly uncontrollable adversary.

Accordingly, Dom’s team plots a meticulous strategy—one that makes use of a wealth of talents to control the heretofore uncontrollable realm of dreams—to manipulate the dreams of global energy conglomerate heir, Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy), and plant an idea that will prevent him from monopolizing the energy industry. Each member of Dom’s team represents an attempt to control some aspect of the dream process, from Yusuf (Dileep Rao) the Chemist, whose sedatives initiate near-endless sleep, to Ariadne (Ellen Page) the Architect, who constructs the dream world, to the Eames (Tom Hardy) the Forger, who creates weapons and identities out of thin air. The specialists all prepare clever plans to control their respective aspects during the multi-stage inception, the act of planting an idea in the mind by delving into deeper dream levels, yet they face seemingly preternatural resistance the longer they spend in Fischer’s dreamscape. In response, the dreamer, or controller, of each level must wrest control of their dream level from forces beyond their control, be they physiological or emotional. Inception’s climax bounces between dreamers on each level as they battle subconscious soldiers, anti-gravity, and errant emotional manifestations to regain control of their dream worlds. At crucial points during the climax, each dreamer regains control of their level moments before they are “kicked,” or awakened, into relinquishing control.

The concept of control also surfaces in certain concepts, characterizations and arcs. The very concept of dream-sharing, including the acts of extraction and inception, is built on the foundation of attempting to control a realm of uncontrolled thought. A victim of a dream-share extraction, Saito hires Dom to perform an inception on Fischer in an effort to both prevent Fischer from controlling an industrial monopoly and likely establish his own conglomerate. Even the target of the inception, Fischer, is seeking his deceased father’s approval to control his own life. To varying degrees, each character and concept in Inception is dedicated to echoing the theme of gaining or losing control.

By the conclusion of Inception, the idea of control is prevalent in every aspect of the story from the characterizations to concepts to the props (i.e. totems like Dom’s spinning top, which act as barometers of differences between controlled dreams and reality). When Dom abandons the top in favor of his children at the end, he becomes the embodiment of the idea of control and its inherent irony. He has become a man who has regained control, but only after struggling against, and frequently losing to, forces beyond his control, both internal and external. However, even in this moment of triumph, the irony of control—that delicate balance between losing and gaining control—lords over the scene. As Dom makes his way to his children and exits the frame, the top, which affirms Dom’s presence in reality by falling, he spun seconds earlier continues to spin until it wobbles, seemingly losing control.

Why Can’t I Be Spider-Man?

Peter Parker is black. His experience—that of an orphaned teen from Queens who moves in with his lower-middle-class Aunt and Uncle, loses his Uncle to random violence and struggles with money/employment/love after gaining new responsibilities—is uniquely, if sadly–the violence, the substitute parenting, the poor economic condition—African-American. Despite aspects Parker’s of experience that may mark it as distinctly African-American, it is still an experience that is indicative of the American middle-class—albeit lower middle—experience; an experience that, last I checked, is unattached to any one race. Which is why the current debate over a black man’s, actor-comedian Donald Glover, ability to play the iconic Spider-Man strikes me as progressive and sad.

Over the Memorial Day weekend, Glover, Troy on NBC’s Community, started a online campaign to audition for the currently vacant role of Peter Parker/Spider-Man in a Sony’s Spider-Man reboot. Glover’s campaign was a direct response to a rant on sci-fi pop culture blog io9 that stated, “the last thing Spider-Man should be is another white guy.” This statement, both timely and provocative, has met with applaud and derision. The majority of the applaud came from fans who see Spider-Man as a character beyond color: an everyman who speaks to the struggle of growing up and facing responsibility; while detractors take the stance that Spider-Man was designed as white character and should remain thus to ensure a faithful adaptation.

The fact that io9 even raised this question makes my heart glad. As a young comics reader, I always favored Spidey because there was no cowl or spit curl stopping me from thinking he could be black. Sure, I knew Peter Parker was white, but I also indulged the fantasy that a brother could easily be behind the bug eyes. Reading speculation of an African-American Spidey is simply cool. I’m so pleased to see that the world has grown tolerant enough to hear and debate this notion. However, I’m not naïve enough to believe this will be a reality, even in a world where Spidey makes deals with the devil and the first Captain America was black.

Neither Sony nor Disney nor Marvel would risk significantly altering their most bankable property, even if the best man for the job was black, brown or yellow. Donald Glover will not win this role because he is ill suited for the role in any logical way, but because he is not bankable to a mainstream audience. The next Spider-Man movie will not be anchored by a black lead for fear, however illogical, of it being viewed as a “urban” film. The realities of the film industry—of which there is one undeniable truth: what sells, rules—revolve around selling art as a product. If an African-American Peter Parker won’t sell to most audiences then the studios won’t entertain the notion. But, I don’t believe modern audiences would shun a Spider-Man of a different skin color. At least I hope they wouldn’t.

There are myriad reasons why audiences wouldn’t deny an African-American Peter Parker, especially in Glover’s case. Beyond the lively quality a lithe comedian like Glover might bring to the part—including the return of the sorely missed wisecracking—an African-American Spider-Man/Peter Parker will see a subtle ratcheting of the pathos due to the inherent social conditions facing lower-middle class African-Americans, adding even more gravitas to Parker's plight, and a lead that reflects the diversity of 21st century America, particularly that of contemporary New York, the "crossroads of the world." Most importantly, this refreshing take on Peter Parker/Spider-Man has the potential to transcend typical portrayals of African-Americans and their experience. In the past twenty years, how often have audiences seen a male African-American character who isn’t a criminal or a ne’er do well outside of a John Singleton, Spike Lee or Will Smith, Martin Lawrence or Tyler Perry movie? An African-American Spider-Man could prove that our men—those who aren’t Will Smith—could be heroes again. Audiences who voted for the first African-American President would be hard pressed to turn away from a movie that shows African-Americans in a better light. In an age where our images are tarnished by poverty, indignity and thuggish buffoonery, an African-American Spider-Man may not move mountains but it will surely knock a ton of rocks out of place.

Sadly, this may never come to pass, and, if it does, it will be a long ways down the road. But, more unlikely things have happened (looking at you Mr. Obama). And if the unlikely were to occur, it would be fraught with an ungodly level of resistance—racist, traditionalist and irrational—as evident in a fair amount of the early reactions to Glover’s campaign (a fact our President knows about first-hand). Much as I’d love to see an African-American Peter Parker/Spidey, I’ve resigned myself to knowing I will likely never see it happen. But, I also thought I’d never see an African-American president. So, I ask: In a world where it’s viable for one African-American to be elected president, why can’t one be Spider-Man?

Splice - Review

** out of five stars

Rule 34 states, “if it exists, there’s porn of it.” After catching a preview screening of writer-director Vincenzo Natali’s new sci-fi/horror thriller Splice, I’m positive that a new type of niche internet porn will arise: gene-spliced human-mutant tongue/human porn. Then again, that may already exist.

My girlfriend called it disturbing; I just thought it was silly and pretentious. Splice is the “cautionary tale” of gene-splicing biologists, Clive (Adrien Brody) and Elsa (Sarah Polley), who, in their quest to create a cure-all protein for a “evil” pharmaceutical company, create a mutant spliced from animal and human DNA. Of course, their project goes south when their mad scientist tendencies flare and they choose to raise the mutant, named Dren (Delphine Chanéac)—nerd backwards, how cute—as a pet/child. Complications ensue when Dren, who grows at an accelerated rate, matures to roughly age 16 in a matter of weeks and faces a sexual awakening that will make audiences cringe or chuckle. Splice culminates with a disturbingly gruesome and silly denouement that ranks as one of the most ludicrous “now, I’ve seen it all” moments ever.

Splice lives or dies by the audience’s willingness to buy into its premise because beyond that there’s nothing spectacular or clever about this flick. The plot is a stale rehash of the age-old “scientist push boundaries and pay for it” construct, dashed with a bit of moral hand-wringing over the ethical concerns of cloning and “animal” testing. The pacing is atrocious. 90% of Splice is setup, with only the last half-hour registering any active development of character or plot. At least an 75 minutes of the film consists of Brody and Polley’s characters bickering over the “morality” of their experiment then struggling with their twisted parenthood, which would be acceptable if the characters were relatable or intelligent. Where Brody’s Clive is a optimistic, if weak-willed, hipster scientist, Polley’s Elsa is a particularly unlikeable mix of a damaged abuse survivor and smug mad scientist. Despite their advanced education, both lack any semblance of common sense when it comes to raising a human/animal mutant hybrid pet/child like Dren. Dren her/itself becomes a more defined character near the films conclusion, but—due to a lack of language, weird spasms and creepy glares—mostly comes off as more of a creepy, horny pet than anything resembling a human.

Despite the issues with plot, pacing and character, atmosphere in Splice is top notch. The camera filter gives the film a blue-green tint that makes the audience feel like they’re submerged in a deep-sea sensory deprivation tank. Also, the limited cast and empty locales, such as the lab and Elsa’s farm, contribute to a foreboding sense of isolation that enhances the notion of hidden shame running through Splice. In addition to atmosphere, easily the film’s greatest achievement was Dren. As a mix of animal human DNA that is 75% human, 5% rat, 5% scorpion, 5% fish, 5% bat/bird and 5% gargoyle, Dren is suitably creepy and oddly alluring. Dren is designed as a sexy manticore, with enough humanity—of course, in the supple female form a la Species—to somehow seduce but lacking enough to make even the most open mind think twice. If Natali’s goal was to achieve the balance between seductive and unnerving, he succeeded ably with Dren.

If Dren and her “parents” exploits prove less then disturbing then this may be the flick for you. Otherwise, it is an acquired taste that most audiences won’t want to sample. Splice may have a wonderfully speculative, if creepy, moral conundrum at heart, but its stale plot, turgid pacing and distasteful characters will keep audiences at a distance. While it succeeds on atmosphere and “creature” effects, Splice tries to hard to ask questions that have been asked before while trying to creep its audience out. It succeeds more in the latter than the former, because I felt pretty slimy after leaving the theater.