Monday Morning Critic – Napoleon Dynamite TV Show vs. Film Thoughts, Denzel Washington: Unstoppable & Safe House

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Every Monday morning, InsidePulse Movies Czar Scott “Kubryk” Sawitz brings an irreverent and oftentimes hilarious look at pop culture, politics, sports and whatever else comes to mind. And sometimes he writes about movies.

The new Napoleon Dynamite television show is one of my new favorite things to watch on Fox. Usually FX is the place where the good shows are and Fox proper has a number of singing shows or something; I rarely watch it unless House is on. I find it amusing because of my thoughts towards the show’s source material. Why? Because I really disliked the Napoleon Dynamite film when it came out in theatres in 2004. I can’t believe I spent money on that film. It was easily the most disappointing film I’ve ever had the displeasure to watch. I had heard such good things about it and the lines friends of mine quoted from the film were fairly funny without the context of having seen the film.

Thus when I watched the film I was disappointed in two ways; the fact that everyone liked it but me was one but the fact that I had spent money on it disappointed me too. I hate seeing bad films but I really dislike having spent money to see them. It’s a double whammy in the same way Mark Wahlberg must’ve been feeling after the Oscar nominations for The Fighter were announced. Imagine being in his shoes for a minute.

He’s coming off The Fighter, a passion project of his he trained his ass off for years. Wahlberg duplicated Ward’s style perfectly as a boxer, which is difficult to do, and you can tell he spent years in a ring to get ready for this role. The project itself was something he kept alive when it was dead a handful of times and even removed his tattoos for. He got Oscar nominated for The Departed shortly before and you’d think this would be the crowning jewel for his career. It would be a great story; he steps in an nearly steals the Scorsese film and snags an Oscar nomination for it and then comes his big dramatic acting showcase, the one that was a passion project that he kept alive by any means necessary.

I may not have liked The Fighter, as I thought it was an above average film that didn’t get to the best part of Mickey Ward’s career (the Gotti trilogy, which defined his legacy and what he’s best known for), but I can admire the passion Wahlberg had for the project. Ward was a Boston guy and a boxing legend in that town and Wahlberg has no shame being a diehard New England sports fan. It’s kind of refreshing in an era where Hollywood celebrities oftentimes become front-runners to whatever is the hot new sports team or just randomly show up at Laker games. Wahlberg “kept it real” so to speak and he’s the one that really got screwed in all of this. Christian Bale drops 100 pounds and Melissa Leo went ugly for the picture and they win Oscars; Amy Adams gets another nomination for merely studying and duplicating a stereotypical Boston accent. Yet without the former Marky Mark there is no film.

Wahlberg’s the one that did the heavy lifting to get the film off the ground and into production and I think the highest award he won was being slimed by Nickelodeon. In this day and age it’s a half step ahead of a Golden Globe, I think. I imagine the post-Oscar conversation with his agent probably went something like this:

“Let me look at the scripts I was sent. Does David Russell have anything lined up? No? Ok, I guess it’s either Action Explosion Man or Explosion Action Man huh. Can I do both, just schedule it back to back? It’s not like I have much to do but look like a tough guy, you know.”

My disappointment was somewhere along those lines. So when I saw that Fox was crafting a television show based off the film I was expecting a train wreck of epic proportions but I was pleasantly surprised. You can tell a lot of things have been changed from the film to the television show, which you can watch an episode below.

What I find amusing about the television show is that it takes the inherent formula of the film, about Napoleon (Jon Heder) and his wacky family in some small town in New Mexico, and gives it a pop culture sensibility. With only 22 minutes to tell a story, as opposed to two hours, the show has to condense the sort of long formula that Jared and Jeshua Hess used for the film. My problem with the film was that it felt like someone imitating a Wes Anderson film but without the darkness or the comedy that goes along with it.

It just had the quirkiness and it felt forced. I can appreciate why people thought it was funny and love it; it’s just not my kind of film. I can respect that. This is why I find it so remarkably interesting that I enjoy the television despite not being a fan of the film; sometimes you can change one main thing from film to television and it becomes more accessible.

The television takes that aspect of it and condenses it into a somewhat formulaic animated sitcom format, obviously, and it works more effectively because of it. There’s a certain commercial sensibility that helps center the series that the film didn’t have that makes it more accessible. There’s a certain charm to the show’s comedy that makes it work in a way that Napoleon Dynamite as a film didn’t work.

Random Thought of the Week

The week’s big film release, to me at least, is Safe House with Denzel Washington. Why? Because we’re in for a rare treat as a film audience, something’s that happened before but doesn’t happen as often as we’d like, and it’s got a very small chance of not being awesome. We saw it in American Gangster and Training Day to a much higher degree, as those were more prestige oriented films and not early February releases, and it’s something that the actor rarely gives us.

We get EVIL Denzel Washington.

Denzel is one of the more unique actors out there in that no matter what role he plays he’s always someone you like. Even in American Gangster and Training Day it’s fairly hard to dislike him, despite him being the bad guy, because he always gets good characters with good motivations. If you think about it we shouldn’t like Frank Lucas for example. He’s a drug dealer who has no problem killing as many people as possible to be the heroin kingpin of Harlem; the real life Frank Lucas makes your skin crawl when he discusses what he did and why. But you get Washington as his character and Lucas suddenly becomes a tragically flawed character. No matter what he would’ve done he would’ve been successful; he just opted to be successful as a drug wholesaler. Same with Alonzo in Training Day; he’s a cop corrupt as the day is long but there’s an odd nobility about him for most of the film.

That moral ambiguity aspect of Denzel in these films, as well as in Safe House, is what makes this film that more interesting to me on a purely cinematic basis for many reasons. Denzel is such a good actor that we kind of get used to him being a good, awesome guy in every film that we kind of forget that he plays a great villain. And I think a lot of it is because he’s such a good actor and has such a high profile that casting him as a villain is really hard.

If you think about Denzel could be the great villain of our times if he really wanted to. Anytime he’s played the bad guy he’s done it so well I’ve wondered what a good action film with him as the bad guy would be like. Like if he stepped in as the villain in a Mission Impossible sequel that’d he immediately become the best villain in the franchise because Denzel doesn’t half-ass anything. It’s the one thing I respect most about Denzel; no matter how silly the plot is, or becomes, he somehow manages to elevate the material above and beyond what it has any right to be. I call it the I’m Denzel Washington Moment moment, much like how Keith Hernandez had his moment on Seinfeld.

Denzel Washington always has a moment in films that would be bad without him that somehow he kind of acknowledges that he is just going to make this film good no matter what. If you think about it a film like Out of Time is just flat out intellectually insulting as a thriller; with so many twists up until the end you’d think that without Washington this is a direct to video level thriller. When you look at that film outside of Denzel’s involvement it reeks of the DTV type thriller that people rent once on a gag. And yet once Denzel’s in it there’s an elevation to it you don’t notice until you turn it off. I find it remarkable, which is why I’m in for Safe House this weekend. Even if it’s ridiculous Denzel’s there to turn it up and make it watchable.

A Movie A Week – The Challenge

This Week’s DVD – Unstoppable

Whenever you hear “based on a true story” for an action film the immediate reaction ought to be this: eye rolls. Usually it’s something small that gets blown up to spectacular proportions, as Hollywood has a tendency to make a mountain out of a molehill if only because it’s more cinematic. Thus comes Unstoppable, the tale of an engineer (Denzel Washington) and conductor (Chris Pine) that follows a buddy cop formula about two men trying to stop a runaway train.

It works because it’s a traditional buddy cop scenario, of the old hand and young rookie, working together as they bring down a train that’s under full power with no one at the controls. Full of horrible chemicals, it’s up to Denzel and Chris Pine to save the day despite their own differences. It’s a slight revamp of the typical buddy cop formula, except instead of veteran and crazy guy there’s veteran and rookie, and it’s also interesting because it’s the first time in a while we’ve seen Tony Scott not go crazy. After Man on Fire and Domino seemed to show that he had fallen in love with taking a good story and making it all trippy, it’s a straightforward white knuckle thriller that doesn’t over extend its boundaries.

It’s a perfectly acceptable thriller that doesn’t become brilliant but doesn’t sink, either. Recommended.

What Looks Good This Weekend, and I Don’t Mean the $2 Pints of Bass Ale and community college co-eds with low standards at the Alumni Club

Safe House – Denzel Washington plays himself as a badass former CIA agent who walks into a secure facility manned by Ryan Reynolds. People want to kill him and Reynolds gets in the way; shenanigans ensue.

See It – Denzel doesn’t do bad films. He may not do brilliant films but he’s the most bankable guy when it comes to quality thrillers.

Journey 2 – Another sequel to the surprise hit, this time replace Brendan Fraser with The Rock.

See It – It looks to be a solid family film, which usually means it’ll be enjoyable but not brilliant.

The Vow – Rachel McAdams loses her memory. Channing Tatum has to help her get it back.

Skip It – Not based on a Nicolas Sparks’ book, but it sure as hell looks like another in a long line of crappy Nichols Sparks books turned films.

Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace – Star Wars starts or something.

Skip It – It sucked in 2D, now it just has another dimension to suck in.

Scott “Kubryk” Sawitz brings his trademarked irreverence and offensive hilarity to Twitter in 140 characters or less. Follow him @MMCritic_Kubryk.