Reviews

This film doubles as a peerless document of skateboarding as a legitimate American phenomenon *and* an unflinching look into the dark and doomed life of Mark Rogowski.

Ms. Stickler deftly handles the thrill of Rogowski's career triumphs and the chilling fall from grace that no one could have anticipated or, sadly, prevented.

'Stoked' stands bravely as neither celebratory nor exploitive; nor does it presume to answer 'Why?'. Instead, like the Maysles brothers' finest work, this film presents a 'fly on the wall' look at the Who, What, Where, and How with the precision and objectivity of a postmortem exam.

It's tough to successfully reconcile the duality this film presents to its audience - the great retrospective fun of high octane 80s culture sits uncomfortably next to what is essentially a grim and unsettling story. Viewers have to sort out for themselves if Rogowski's doom was a product of his huge fame and subsequent & abrupt fall from the top, or if it was, sadly, bound to happen anyway.

Rogowski could have been one of those elementary school teachers or office workers or Home Depot employees gone bad in what would have been an otherwise anonymous American murder story - but he wasn't: he was Gator. And as the authorities & families involved (and perhaps most tellingly, the friends & skaters in the periphery) in this dark tale will tell you, that may have made all the difference in the world.

This ain't no "Meet The Beat-Alls".

Where are ridiculously funny and parodic characters like Lucky Captain Rabbit King when you need them?

Making MoJo JoJo the antagonist-focus of the film seemed like a good idea to me . . .until I saw how humorless and toothless he is in this flick. Where was MoJo's over-the-top hyperbole and his signature ineffective rage?

Also, I question how necessary an "origin of..." type of movie is with a popular brand that's been available to us for more than a couple of years now (and with several volumes of home video releases). They certainly didn't expand upon or improve the story for fans already familiar with the Girls.

The various incarnations of evil monkeys was great, though - a brief moment of what this flick could and should have been.

P.S. - Warning: even the Dexter's Lab short is strangely alien. It seems like they spent a lot of time cleaning up the animation and making it flashy, but for naught; this was the ugliest "episode" of Dexter I've ever seen. Even the voice talent seemed to be on loan - Dee Dee sounded more like Chrissy from Three's Company, and Dexter sounded as irritatingly unlike himself as Mel Blanc's weak successors in recent Looney Tunes projects. What gives?

Although I can see this style of storytelling begin to wear thin on plenty of jaded/cynical types, I think The Royals does an excellent job of presenting a John Irving-like "dysfunctional" family on the big screen better than any actual Irving film adaptation has.

Plenty of people have bemoaned the precocious and cheeky nature of Anderson/Wilson's "off beat" characters in Rushmore & The Royal Tennenbaums, and I can somewhat see the point; continuing in this direction/style may lead these two talented writers to inadvertently parody themselves. But in their defense, The Royals actually *feels* more like the big emotional opus that they might have written *before* their more accessible and popular Rushmore, and was realized with confidence as a result of their second films' successes. I'd love to read more on these fellows and see who came first, the Royals or Max Fischer.

And anyone who has cited PT Anderson's Magnolia when evaluating The Royals hits on something solid. The *real* emotional resonance of Richie's suicide attempt and the *real* trauma inflicted on the kids' young & adult lives by their father (not just simply the wonderfully comedic and laugh out loud bits by the stunning Gene Hackman, but the *true* ramifications of his actions/inactions) digs deep, and gives the film a seriousness that cannot be ignored. Relegating the kids to supporting players in the "Isn't Royal Tennenbaum The Funniest Dirtbag Dad *Ever*?! Show" would have been foolish and superfluous - Anderson and Wilson give the whole family such great depth and emotional tug that it may offset the verve and flow of the comedic aspects of the film, but it also pushes this great work into something more special, something memorable. Like Magnolia, people were walking out of the theater or sighing heavily at the alleged preposterousness of it all - but both films cut so deep and memorably that I can't help but hold both in the highest esteem. Bravo!

For anyone who A) believes that Shrek actually deserves an Academy Award nomination, and wasn't celebrated as such as a result of studio politics in a year where three huge entertainment conglomerates happened to release big-budget computer animation films (Disney, Paramount, Dreamworks) or B)that the movie was actually any good, please examine the following:

• Shrek pales in comparison to Pixar's Monster's Inc., and for very obvious reasons. Shrek desperately relies wholesale on it's (beware of the following buzzwords) "cheeky/sarcastic/irreverent/ironic/tongue-in-cheek/post-modern" send ups of classic fairy tales and folklore and . . . . not much else. I mean, it surely isn't relying on the completely NON-EXISTENT chemistry between Mike Myers and Eddie Murphy. Shrek is Eddie Murphy's most UN-funny performance since Vampire In Brooklyn; and Mr. Myers starting getting truly & incorrigibly irritating by the time the first Austin Powers hit video. His disappearance from America's pop culture radar is long overdue.

• The story: Monsters, Inc. - like each and every one of the very excellent Pixar films - has heart and a warmth that cleverly (and NOT insultingly) touches every generation of viewers. Monsters, Inc. is able to speak to the audience in very touching and enjoyable ways, much like Toy Story 2; adults can remember/enjoy/get teary-eyed over their childhoods in a very sweet way, while enjoying seeing the joy and glee in their own kids' eyes while being entertained by the very excellent John Goodman, Billy Crystal and Steve Buscemi (see some other long-winded Monsters, Inc. reviewer for story/plot details). What do we get from Shrek? A dragon that falls in love with the donkey - not for sincere emotional effect, but for dumb sexual comedy. Shrek is empty, hollow and cad-ish in comparison, without a single level of emotional resonance; Monsters, Inc. achieves several, handily.

• The comedy: The performance of a comedy team like Goodman & Crystal speaks for itself compared to the forced, joyless interaction between Myers' unlikeable Shrek and Murphy's neutered donkey. Goodman and Crystal - probably by virtue of Crystal's deep comedy roots & Borscht Belt classicism - touch on hammy old humor, updated and "modern" laughs and the good old goofy stuff for the wee ones. In fact, Monsters, Inc. struck me immediately as one of the least gag-oriented Pixar flicks - a lesser writing/producing team (ahem, Dreamworks) would rely on nothing but predictable monster gags in the same context. Don't believe me? Save for the Gingerbread Man scene, Shrek's "clever" gags are tired, overdone versions of the kinds of things we *really* laughed with in greats like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and the shorts of Chuck Jones & Tex Avery. The animation & cartoon industry has been lampooning themselves (and related genres like fairy tales, comic books, etc.) with good humor since the 1930s - do we need Shrek to do this for us again, now?

• The animation: It's impossible to not touch on this: Shrek's design is about as likeable & attractive as that of Antz, Dreamworks' other totally missed-the-mark and, well, ugly animated film. No one took any creative liberties with the environment and setting - we get an anonymous forest, a castle, a countryside. Wow. The setting of Monsters, Inc. is a visual carnival of original ideas and imaginative film making. Taking it's cues from existing influences and bettering them, or at the very least making them dazzle on their own, is half the reason animation exists - did YOU get that from the generic look and feel of Shrek?

I will be thrilled - and honestly shocked - if the "voters" choose Monsters, Inc. over the huge-selling and grossly overrated Shrek. I've been conditioned to expect so little from fellow movie goers (see: Snatch and A Beautiful Mind's inexplicable presence in the IMDB.com Top 250) that I totally expect the more inferior film to get the award (notice, if you will, that I'm not even entertaining the thought of throwing Jimmy Neutron into this discussion - although, a comparison between Neutron and Shrek is probably more appropriate; it's easier to sort the trash that way, isn't it?).