A review by Jeffrey Overstreet.

This review was originally published at Filmwell.

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Writer and director – Michel Hazanavicius; director of photography – Guillaume Schiffman; editor – Michel Hazanavicius and Anne-Sophie Bion; music – Ludovic Bource; production designer – Laurence Bennett; costumes – Mark Bridges; producer – Thomas Langmann. Starring – Jean Dujardin (George Valentin), Bérénice Bejo (Peppy Miller), James Cromwell (Clifton), Penelope Ann Miller (Doris), Malcolm McDowell (the Butler), Missi Pyle (Constance), Beth Grant (Peppy’s Maid), Ed Lauter (Peppy’s Butler), Joel Murray (Policeman), Ken Davitan (Pawnbroker), Uggie (the Dog) and John Goodman (Al Zimmer). The Weinstein Company. 1 hour 40 minutes.

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It happens every January — movie ads fill up with boasts about awards they’ve won. In a few days, those boasts will start to include Oscar nominations.

And The Artist is currently the most boastful of all. Filmmaker Michel Hazanavicius’s tribute to Hollywood’s silent film era is stirring up enthusiasm among audiences and critics alike.

And The Artist looks to me like the right film to love right now, if you want to be cool, because it’s so countercultural. This is, after all, the dawn of the age of 3D and IMAX, when bigger and louder and more elaborate is better. The Artist is “silent.” It’s black and white. It’s as brash as an “Occupy the Big Screen” protest. What is more, it’s cheerful in a year of dark, grim, and despairing. So it’s kind of rebellious to love it, right?

Set in 1927 Hollywood, The Artist follows the fall from grace… or rather, the fall from fame… of George Valentin (Jean Dujardin), a silent movie star who seems so perpetually convinced of his own entitlement to fame and fortune, so in love with his own onscreen persona, so drunk on applause that we have every right to hope for an educational fall. Not ruination, no… but reform.

As we watch him play the classic silent-movie archetypes — the suave gentleman, the Douglas Fairbanks swashbuckler, the ancestors of Indiana Jones, etc — accompanied by a big-screen Jack Russell terrier who just might beat Tintin‘s Snowy in an IQ test, things aren’t so glamorous back at the Valentin ranch. His wife (Penelope Anne Miller in a return to the screen that’s hardly worth mentioning) is wasting away from neglect, a zombie in the mansion.

I don’t know how you’ll respond to this, but my sympathies were with this poor woman immediately. I quickly figured out that I was out of step with the movie, though. Because the movie’s sympathies aren’t with her at all. More on that in a bit.

The film has already lured us into hoping for the glorious union between Valentin and someone else — his happenstance, love-at-first-sight encounter with an admirer, Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo). Clearly, two smiles as big and white as those belong together, no matter what promises have been made. Peppy’s an opportunist with a heart of gold. She’s using her chance moment in the spotlight with Valentin to charm the public and become the Next Big Thing. At this point, the film seems to be headed deep into cynical satire about the superficiality of Hollywood.

But no, Peppy’s celebrity is treated as legitimate and wonderful. And when she becomes the first big star of “talkies,” rising to glory while Valentin plunges down into irrelevance, a victim of the forgetful public, she takes pity on the poor outdated icon.

It turns out that this story is more about the rehabilitation of Valentin’s career than it is about the reformation of his priorities.

One critic summed up the film’s lesson like this: “pride can interfere with progress… failure to adapt can make you obsolete.” Well, sure. But is that a lesson worth celebrating when “progress” is portrayed as the public’s fickle rush to embrace any new trend? Sure, “failure to adapt can make you obsolete.” Does that mean an “artist” — this film’s title rates among the most inappropriate I’ve ever seen — should always adapt in order to please the public? Should box office drive our decisions? Should fame be our goal, and popularity our standard of what is best?

I enjoyed the film’s singing and dancing and visual cleverness… and yes, the dog… for the most part. It was all very playful, funny, shiny, a hoot. Hazanavicius showed guts when he committed to reviving a form that hasn’t been popular for more than half a century.

And yet, a few minutes after the credits rolled, I felt that I’d been served a chocolate éclair made entirely of toxic chemicals. In a year full of meaningful feasts, this is the movie we’re going to celebrate? Very little in it strikes me as award-caliber material. Just because a recipe hasn’t been used in decades doesn’t mean that we should give highest honors to somebody who bakes up a batch to show it still works.

Moreover, in a year when filmmakers seemed especially preoccupied with questions about the meaning of life, why would we choose to give highest honors to a film that celebrates vanity? I don’t mind movies that revive old-fashioned methods. Hugo, The Muppets, Winnie the Pooh, and War Horse all did that in 2011, and their narratives celebrated respectable themes.

Glenn Kenny, who I find to be consistently one of the most thoughtful and experienced film reviewers around, used harsher words than I’m using:

…the fact that this movie is being proclaimed the Best Film of 2011 by various critics’ groups is literally—there’s no other word for it—insane. One could make a snide remark or two about the various members of said groups perhaps strongly identifying with the film’s title character’s entitled indignance at his imposed obselescence, but that would just be mean. However, I will say that any expectation that these proclamations will effect some kind of populist wellspringing on the film’s behalf is even more insane. We shall see.

I won’t go so far as to call my Artist-loving colleagues “insane,” but I sure don’t get what they’re so excited about.

The Artist is, in my opinion, not only frivolous — it’s irresponsible in its glorification of fame, fortune, and glamour. And it celebrates a love-at-first-sight encounter that leads to an extramarital affair (it may not be consummated, but come on: Affairs can happen within a gaze, within a silence). It goes so far as to reduce the hero’s betrayed, neglected wife to comic relief, brushing her aside as a convenient punchline. Call me Hazana-vicious, but this movie seemed to me to be 100 minutes of slick-looking, engaging, ebullient song and dance in service of… what, exactly? There’s the rub. You may smile and smile, and be a villain.

Nevertheless, Oscar forecasters see a Best Picture statue in The Artist’s future. Of course they do. The Academy Awards are the biggest annual party that Hollywood throws for itself, and The Artist is a movie that worships Hollywood — its vanity, its values, its people-pleasing, its superficiality. Looks like a done deal.

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Other Review Excerpts:

Jaime N. Christley, Slant: 

The idea of making a film about the American cinema between 1927 and 1933 seems as daunting a prospect as making a film about the entire cinema — in other words, the difference between conceiving the magnitude of a galaxy and the magnitude of the universe. You might as well make a 100-minute film about the Renaissance. Michel Hazanavicius’s The Artist neatly sidesteps this unsolvable dilemma by ignoring everything that’s fascinating and memorable about the era, focusing instead on a patchwork of general knowledge, so eroded of inconvenient facts that it doesn’t even qualify as a roman à clef.

The 1927-1933 period witnessed an almost unquantifiable number of movies whose greatness remains unchallenged, from auteurs such as Josef von Sternberg, F.W. Murnau, John Ford, Ernst Lubitsch, Frank Borzage, King Vidor, Raoul Walsh, Charles Chaplin, as well as, more controversially (since conventional wisdom places their creative peaks as pre-1927), Buster Keaton, Erich von Stroheim, and D.W. Griffith. The Artist simply cannot be bothered with any of those old fossils, and goes full steam ahead with the presumption that the silent cinema was most accurately depicted in Singin’ in the Rain, i.e. stolid costume dramas, hysterically acted against cardboard sets.

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The 1920s and ’30s are full of tragic stories … of actors and actresses perishing in obscurity, misadventure, scandal, or sheer misfortune. For every screen icon who lived to a ripe, old age, like Lillian Gish and Bette Davis, there’s a Jean Harlow (renal failure, 1937), Jeanne Eagels (heroin overdose, 1929), Sidney Fox (overdose of sleeping pills, 1942), or Carole Lombard (airplane crash, 1942), and those are just a few examples. Furthermore, the period of American movies from 1930 to 1934 are now referred to as the “pre-Code era,” as it became apparent to certain bodies of American morality that Tinseltown, with its off-screen scandals and on-screen amorality, was becoming a modern-day Sodom and Gomorrah, and needed to be saved from itself. To say that The Artist wallpapers over this stuff would be an understatement.

Devin Faraci:

It’s not that The Artist is bad (although it drags so much in the middle that it comes very close), it’s that The Artist is a trifle. There are nice moments in the film, some lovely moments, but they never add up to anything with meaning, to anything with weight or anything with impact. If The Artist truly were from the period it’s about, it would be a minor film that occasionally played on TCM at 3AM, and about which even hardcore silent film fans wouldn’t care much.

Michael Sicinski (CinemaScope):

This “serious” breakthrough by French comic director Michel Hazanavicius, best known for hisOSS spy-flick parodies, is a head-scratcher, a problem that won’t go away, and above all an object that isn’t worth the ire of any hardcore cinephile. It’s basic mediocrity in a clever new disguise. … We’re watching a hollow premise in action, with the possible proviso that The Artist, like so much late-late-postmodernist, decadent-era trash, flatters its viewership for a thimble’s worth of Wikipedia learning. To call The Artist an homage to the films of the silent era is to imply that Hazanavicius or his muse, actor Jean Dujardin, regard them as more than a manageable plot device. They don’t — it’s apparent in the overall shoddiness of the production itself — but this doesn’t make the film any sort of travesty, or even prevent it from being nominally diverting. What it isn’t, however, is magical. It’s a kind of random-access image succotash, a wet clothesline of half-remembered iconic moments from a college course somebody told somebody else about having taken.

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My review of Steven Spielberg’s War Horse is up at Image’s blog, Good Letters.

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A review by Jeffrey Overstreet.

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Director – Steven Spielberg; writers – Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish; based on the books by Hergé; visual-effects supervisors – Joe Letteri and Scott E. Anderson; animation supervisor – Jamie Beard; editor – Michael Kahn; music – John Williams; art direction – Andrew Jones and Jeff Wisneiwski; producers – Steven Spielberg, Peter Jackson and Kathleen Kennedy. Starring - Jamie Bell (Tintin), Andy Serkis (Captain Haddock), Daniel Craig (Sakharine), Nick Frost (Thomson), Simon Pegg (Thompson), Toby Jones (Silk), Mackenzie Crook (Tom), Daniel Mays (Allan), Gad Elmaleh (Ben Salaad), Joe Starr (Barnaby) and Kim Stengel (Bianca Castafiore). Paramount Pictures and Columbia Pictures. 1 hour 47 minutes.

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In the opening scenes of The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn, the new 3D motion-capture-powered animated spectacle from director Steven Spielberg and producer Peter Jackson, one character in an open marketplace happily informs a stranger, “Everybody knows him. That’s Tintin.”

And yet, after two hours of nearly perpetual, elaborately choreographed action, the audience still doesn’t know who Tintin is.

Those who have lined up to see a comic book character they already know and love may recognize him, but if they do, they’re only recognizing a haircut, an outfit, and the elements around him. To all appearances, Tintin is as blank as any character a film has ever been built around. That signature pinch of hair on the front of his head is actually a clue: Tintin isn’t a cartoon character with thought balloons. He is a balloon, and that point on his head is the knot tying it off! As Manohla Dargis describes him in The New York Times, he’s “lifelike, but without the pulse of real life.”

The boy android in Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence had one hundred times more life than Tintin. In fact, Tintin sometimes feels like a movie that the “mechas” might have assembled inside their own circuitry, unable to locate what it is that differentiates human beings from computers.

I almost feel that I should congratulate Jamie Bell, the actor whose motion-capture performance is animated here — it takes some real genius to create a character so utterly devoid of personality, so convincingly lacking in history, so unaffected by fear or physical stress, so free of meaningful relationships or concerns.

That is a problem.

It doesn’t help that the character who becomes Tintin’s fellow adventurer, the almost perpetually intoxicated Captain Archibald Haddock (“played” by Andy Serkis), is the sort of obnoxious, talkative drunk you try to avoid at parties — flamboyant and exaggerated. When he steals the show from Tintin, you might be tempted to demand that he give it back.

There are plenty of forgettable supporting characters and, strangely, there is not a single female of any importance. Remember the complaints about the lack of women in The Lord of the Rings? Tolkien’s epic feels like a feminist manifesto compared to Tintin, a world in which women appear even more fleetingly than pauses in the film’s action.

Ah, but what about that action, which so many moviegoers are gushing about?

Well, that’s a problem too.

The action in Secret of the Unicorn is as complicated and as carefully engineered as it gets. Throughout, it’s the kind of action that fans of Spielberg’s other action movies — from Raiders of the Lost Ark to Minority Report — love. Chases down sidewalks and streets, chases by car and airplane and ship. Narrow escapes, spectacular explosions, duels on the decks of flaming ships.

But while this action is quite impressive in its Rube-Goldberg-esque design, where is the suspense in action that never bruises its hero, that conspires such preposterous rescues and escapes that we know nothing serious will ever go wrong, that assures us from the opening scenes that all of the apparent danger is just that — apparent danger? Tintin will slip through it as gracefully and confidently as Tweety Bird through the clutches of Sylvester the Cat, but with far less depth of character.

He’s a crash test dummy who never hits a wall. As balloons go, he’s unbreakable.

Further, the animation only distances us further from any sense of suspense, since these can’t properly be called “stunts” and thus convey no real sense of risk. (This is where Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol reigns supreme among 2011′s action-adventure movies.) Animated films can be suspenseful, but they have to cultivate suspense in storytelling and character development, or through action that draws us in and makes us believe. Tintin‘s action overloads the senses. I was checking my watch at the one-hour point.

I’m told that the script by Steven Moffat, Edgar Wright and Joe Cornish interweaves three existing Tintin adventures (The Crab with the Golden Claws, The Secret of the Unicorn, Red Rackham’s Treasure). There’s a snarling and entirely uninteresting villain named Ivan Ivanovich Sakharine (and it’s interesting that the villain’s name is pronounced like “saccharine” when the whole movie feels like it’s made of frosting). There are two identical and mildly amusing police inspectors voiced by Simon Pegg and Nick Frost who manage to slow the action down from time to time for some delightful but fleeting comic interludes. (I would have preferred a whole movie with these guys, who seem to live in a world of playfulness inspired by Jacques Tati.)

I suspect I’ll be thrown off a bridge by fans of the artist Georges Remi — also known as Hergé — for daring to nay-say the comics that delighted them in their childhoods. Hey, I have no experience with those comics, so I have nothing negative to say about them. They may be as enthralling for readers as The Lord of the Rings was for me when I was growing up. The fact remains that while Peter Jackson drew new generations into a love of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, giving them characters they would care about, environments of natural beauty so enthralling that we’d want to go back there someday, and a high-stakes plot rich with suspense and surprise, he doesn’t come anywhere close to achieving that here. Watching Tintin, I felt as detached as if I were looking over the shoulder of a kid playing a non-stop, high-speed video game.

Reading a comic book, you can take your time, study the action, and get to know your characters at a gradual pace. Watching Tintin, you’re tied to the back of a runaway train and told to keep up if you can. I wasn’t very intrigued by the quest, and the more the “secrets” of the Unicorn were revealed, the more underwhelmed I became. And I don’t know that I’ve ever been so thunderstruck and dissatisfied by the film’s abrupt conclusion, which seems to happen during one of the film’s rare pauses. I was still waiting for something that felt significant enough to mark the close of an episode.

Film critic Glenn Kenny mentions Wallace and Gromit in his review, which gave me a sort of “a-ha!” moment. In a short Wallace and Gromit cartoon, we do see action sequences that are similarly elaborate, similarly mechanical, similarly preposterous. And yet, running through it all are a man and his dog whose relationship anchors us to unfolding action. We are happy to chase them through one circus act after another because we enjoy their company. We’d be as happy to sit with them and eat slices of cheese as we are to see them escape the gears of a deadly machine. I watch those claymation cartoons over and over, delighting in their unique camaraderie. I get the feeling, watching Tintin, that if he stopped running he’d vanish like a puff of smoke.

So I’m left not with a finale that gives me any reason to be glad I made the journey, but with a jarring “To Be Continued,” the promise of a sequel that I will make a point to avoid (unless I am powerfully persuaded otherwise by early reviews heralding the arrival of a much, much better movie). This treasure hunt left me without the greatest treasures of all — characters worth visiting, a story worth telling, a reason to care.

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A review by Jeffrey Overstreet, originally published at Filmwell.

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Director – Brad Bird; writers – Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec; based on the television series created by Bruce Geller; director of photography – Robert Elswit; editor – Paul Hirsch; music – Michael Giacchino; “Mission: Impossible” theme – Lalo Schifrin; production design – Jim Bissell; costumes – Michael Kaplan; producers – Tom Cruise, J. J. Abrams and Bryan Burk. Starring – Tom Cruise (Ethan Hunt), Jeremy Renner (Brandt), Simon Pegg (Benji), Paula Patton (Jane), Michael Nyqvist (Hendricks), Vladimir Mashkov (Sidorov), Josh Holloway (Hanaway), Anil Kapoor (Brij Nath), Léa Seydoux (Sabine Moreau) and Tom Wilkinson (I.M.F. Secretary). Paramount Pictures. 2 hours 13 minutes.

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It is a pleasure to announce that director Brad Bird’s Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol is worth every penny of today’s high ticket price. In this moviegoer’s opinion, it’s easily the finest installment in an otherwise mediocre franchise. Moreover, it’s leaves X-Men: First Class, Captain America, and the rest of 2011′s glorified Saturday morning cartoons in its dust.

Give me another ticket, Mr. Bird. I want to take this ride again.

This Mission: Impossible episode begins with our hero, special agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise), in a jail cell in Russia. Why? Long story. The movie will get around to that eventually.

What really matters is this:

A renegade Russian named Kurt Hendricks (Michael Nyqvist of the original Dragon Tattoo film) has decided that the world needs to be “rebooted” through an act of nuclear devastation. It has something to do with his wacky theory that this will advance human evolution. Whatever — he’s just a few launch-code numbers away from launching nuclear missiles that will trigger a war between the U.S. and Russia.

Sounds like a job for the Impossible Missions Force (IMF)… right?

Well, if you’ve seen the previous films, no… the IMF team haven’t exactly become heroes of choice for moviegoers over the past 15 years. Brian De Palma’s initial feature was enjoyable enough, especially for introducing a large American audience to the international film goddess Emmanuelle Béart and for helping to revive John Voight’s career. But John Woo’s sequel was atrocious. J.J. Abrams, in his first attempt as a feature film director, improved things, but the movie amounted to little more than a two-hour episode of Alias starring Tom Cruise instead of Jennifer Garner. Meanwhile, audiences kept referring to the hero as “Tom Cruise.” The name and personality of his character, Ethan Hunt, just weren’t sticking.

Nevertheless, Ethan Hunt’s Russian imprisonment brings a team of talented action-movie sidekicks too set him free. They need him, you see, so he can lead them into action and save the world one more time.

As Ghost Protocol revs its engines, things get complicated in a hurry. No sooner has Hunt made his first move against the villain than he and his team are framed, made to look like they’re the real terrorists. To make a long story short, these undercover agents have to go even deeper undercover, operating without the protection of the American government, in order to prevent humankind from being vaporized. They need somebody to lean on, and have nobody but each other.

Yeah, I know. It sounds like the conventional absurdity of a zillion action movies.

But as you may remember, this stuff can be a whole lot of fun if it’s done well.

At the feast of cinema, action flicks like these are the plate of chocolate chip cookies, or the bowl of buttered popcorn. Their plots are so mechanical, their characters so sketchy, they make the Indiana Jones narratives look like Shakespeare. They’re circus acts, and they run on stunts and cleverness and surprise. They appeal to the Saturday morning cartoon fan in all of us. We’ve worked hard, and now it’s weekend: We want to see something outrageous, zany, an adrenalin rush that will make us forget our troubles for a while. If we ask for that and are instead delivered something deeply meaningful — or worse, realistic — well, it won’t be very satisfying.

But action flicks are not an easy art. Some action filmmakers fulfill the recipe with cheap ingredients and sloppy cooking. They make disposable, forgettable movies. But once in a while, you find a director who takes this stuff seriously, demands excellent ingredients, and invests so much imagination and invention that the result is memorable, worth revisiting, and worth recommending.

What does an action movie need to rise above predictability and mediocrity?

First, it needs engaging action-movie personalities. And this one has them.

Tom Cruise, looking a little more rugged (and thus, a little more human) than normal, is allowed to do what he does best: Play a determined, unbreakable action figure.

Unlike Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, or even Bruce Willis, Cruise has never created characters who convey much complexity, depth, intelligence, or emotional range. His irrepressible zeal is both a weakness and a strength. It prevents him from excelling in quieter moments, in emotional scenes, or in ensemble settings (Cruise cannot help but become the center of attention). But it enables him to commit to scenes of flamboyant action with such enthusiasm that we can almost believe him when he dodges bullets, or sandstorms. He’s more athlete than actor.

Ethan Hunt, being a man of action, determination, and courageous acrobatics, is the most perfect fit for Cruise’s talents that I’ve seen.

Cruise’s colleagues are also fit for their tasks. Simon Pegg is endearingly amusing as a somewhat untrustworthy tech wizard. Jeremy Renner is a rather unnecessary but engaging new addition, playing an analyst dragged into action that uncovers his secret abilities and wounds. Paula Patton is the fighting machine/supermodel who is as ready to use her sex appeal as her deadly kickboxing skills to get the job done. (If she’d been given some fight scenes in Precious, I might have liked that movie a great deal more.) She even gets to beat the snot out of Léa Seydoux, which I enjoyed more than I should have. (Seydoux’s character in Lourdes was so aggravating that I found genuinely guilty pleasure in seeing her so vigorously punished.)

Villains are usually the highlight in films of this genre. They give us the most colorful characterization, the most flamboyant performances. Not this time. As the nuclear-war-wishing madman, Nyqvist isn’t asked to do much more than carry a steel briefcase, look menacing, and fight Tom Cruise. It’s a shame. Villains don’t have to steal the show, and frankly I’m grateful when they don’t. But they should certainly be better than boring.

Second, a great action movie needs a propulsive soundtrack to enhance — but not overwhelm — the action. Michael Giacchino delivers just that here, embracing the franchise’s theme to excellent effect.

Third, it needs three or four thrilling action sequences that are just persuasive enough to seem dangerous and just imaginative enough to surprise us.

That’s where Ghost Protocol is supremely satisfying.

If I described these scenes to you — the jailbreak, the escape from a third-story window, the infiltration of the Kremlin, the adventure in Dubai’s skyscraping Burj Khalifa tower, the adventure on the exterior of the tower, the high-speed-chase in a sandstorm, the climactic battle in an automated parking garage — they would sound absurd. And they are.

What makes them so thrilling is how they manage to be convincing, suspenseful, and full of surprises in spite of their absurdity. How is this accomplished in a way that makes audiences cheer instead of scoff? We need actors who fully commit to every moment, stunts that are breathtakingly executed, editing and direction that draws us in rather than beating us senseless, and good sense of pacing between fast and slow, noise and silence, chaos and control.

Brad Bird, directing his first non-animated feature, shows he has the stuff of action-movie genius.

Some amusement park rides invite you to sit in a stationary chair, strap on goggles, and fly through a simulated environment. But there’s no real wind, no real sights and sounds, no real sense of risk. It’s all just the simulation of action. Me… I prefer real roller-coasters. I like to move through real space, feel wind in my hair, and see that I am actually suspended high above the earth before the rush of plummeting.

Ghost Protocol succeeds by doing action-movie thrills the old-fashioned way.

During the best scenes, I remembered why I still love Raiders of the Lost Ark and Die Hard so much. This movie isn’t nearly as supreme an accomplishment as those action films, but in the age of 300, Clash of the Titans, Immortals, Avatar and Tin Tin, it’s refreshing to watch an action movie made primarily of footage, not animation. While there is a lot of digital enhancement at work, it’s just that — enhancement. We always have at least one foot firmly planted in the stuff of performance and real-world materials. Actors, stunts, environments: The stuff that makes us ask “How did they do that?” That’s a question we don’t ask if the images appear overly altered by digital effects. The vehicles, the expressions, the animals, the dizzying falls, the explosions, the environments — it feels more staged than illustrated, more captured than generated.

When we watch an onstage escape artist submerged in a water tank try to escape a straitjacket, or watch a professional magician “saw a woman in half”, we feel a different kind of suspense than we do if we’re watching a cartoon of the same thing. There is a greater sense of mystery as to how the illusion is being achieved under such restrictions, with such limited resources. There is a sense of risk that something could go wrong.

Similarly, there is a reason we enjoy watching live sports more than cartoons of sports.

I don’t mean to criticize digital animation. That’s an art all its own. But it’s a different art than cinematography — the preservation of events that played out before a camera. The thrills of the original Star Wars films were a different experience than those of the subsequent “prequels,” primarily because so much of what we saw onscreen in 1977, 1980, and 1983 had been incarnate, embodied, existing in three-dimensions with weight and texture and color. Much of what we saw in the prequels was painted, representing environments and objects and costumes that no one ever touched. Thus, the Yoda performed by Frank Oz holds our attention in a more exciting way than the one created by a team of digital artists.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol could have been just a digital cartoon with a few familiar human faces pasted over the top of its animated automatons. What is refreshingly remarkable and compelling is that so much of its cartoonish action is made from real-world stuff in front of cameras.

That’s why the real hero of Ghost Protocol is Brad Bird.

With three celebrated animated features to his name Bird has earned a sterling reputation. Put him at the controls of a cartoon adventure, and you’ll get something worth watching over and over and over again. His films excel in visual design, character development, and thoughtful storytelling that subverts clichés and steers us in unexpected and rewarding directions.

Note how The Iron Giant — perhaps the most beloved “Transformer” the big-screen’s ever seen — is not known for how he smashes and destroys and fights, but for how he protects a boy and resists the impulse to blast away at what opposes him.

Note how The Incredibles are unusual in the realm of superheroes in that their real triumphs can be found in how they function as a supportive and loving family, how they resist temptation, how they invest their powers in service with excellence and responsibility.

Note how Ratatouille does not conclude with the hero’s success in business terms, but with his success in matters of art and conscience. (Remy the Rat doesn’t defeat his enemy; he appeals to what is best in the enemy, leading to redemption. What does he defeat? Cynicism. Arrogance. Resentment. He wins not by violently opposing someone, but by doing good with excellence, so that mediocrity is exposed for what it is.)

So how does Brad Bird surpass our Mission: Impossible expectations?

Where many filmmakers strive to create animated features that look like a real world, Bird, having already achieved that, is now demonstrating that he can do the opposite — create real-world scenes in which things happen that would only seem possible in cartoons.

That’s really Tom Cruise leaping from a ledge toward a passing vehicle and dodging bullets on a Russian street. That’s really Tom Cruise hanging from wires outside of the 130-story Burj Khalifa tower in Dubai, the tallest building in the world. Cruise isn’t in as much danger as he seems to be, but still… we’re watching stunts performed high above the earth by the same actor who will do interviews later, not by a stuntman or an animated avatar.

Seeing this, I think I have finally come around to appreciating Tom Cruise’s place at the movies. We just don’t have many actors willing to throw themselves into actual action the way he does. And Brad Bird has given him a perfect opportunity to do just that.

With help from screenwriters Josh Appelbaum and André Nemec, Bird also upends several of the franchise’s conventions. In this episode, the fictional super-spy technology that is always designed to excite our imaginations… fails. Repeatedly. This strips the superheroes of their usual advantage, and requires them to think fast, devise scrappy solutions, and behave with compelling desperation. This cynicism about technology is refreshing. And more importantly — it’s familiar. It is part of our daily experience, and that makes the world of Ghost Protocol more persuasive, its characters more sympathetic.

I do say “characters” with some amusement. Mission: Impossible has never given us characters of any particular depth. Bravo. Appelbaum and Nemec deserve credit for not pretending that this is Shakespeare. They give the characters just enough personality. And they give the story just enough drama, context, connection to previous installments, and just enough slack for us to sense a sequel on the horizon.

But if we’re lucky, Bird won’t just direct the next one — he’ll write it too.

Bird has already raised the bar for feature animation in both spectacle and storytelling. Could he be planning to do the same thing for live-action adventure films? If that’s his mission, it looks like he’s chosen to accept it.

A review by Jeffrey Overstreet.

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Director – Ron Howard; writers- Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman; based on the book by Dr. Seuss; director of photography – Don Peterman; editors – Dan Hanley and Mike Hill; music – James Horner; the song “You’re a Mean One, Mr. Grinch” written by Albert Hague and Theodor S. Geisel and performed by Jim Carrey; production designer – Michael Corenblith; special makeup effects – Rick Baker; producers – Brian Grazer and Ron Howard. Starring – Jim Carrey (Grinch), Jeffrey Tambor (May Who), Christine Baranski (Martha May Whovier), Bill Irwin (Lou Lou Who), Molly Shannon (Betty Lou Who), Taylor Momsen (Cindy Lou Who), Kelley (Max the Dog), Frank Welker (Voice of Max the Dog) and Anthony Hopkins (Narrator). Universal Pictures. 102 minutes. Rated PG.

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Some stories are short for a reason.

Dr. Seuss’s children’s book How the Grinch Stole Christmas tells a simple tale about a mean old grouch who learns that love conquers all. The Grinch hates the Whos, it’s as simple as that. But no matter how much adversity he throws down on the town of Whoville, he’s never able to spoil Christmas. Animator Chuck Jones made a beloved animated cartoon of the story that stuck to the script, provided perfect voices for the characters, and added a memorable, brilliant song.

But Ron Howard’s movie adaptation stretches the story out to 109 minutes, gets preoccupied with why the Grinch is grouchy, and uses Whoville as an opportunity to show off special effects and a cast of seemingly hundreds. It also gives Jim Carrey the opportunity to turn in the most superhuman comic performance of his career. For the spectacle of this performance, I’m almost glad the movie was made.

Almost.

But the rest of it is just bad storytelling, totally devoid of restraint. And worse — it is the opposite of a faithful adaptation. It is a betrayal of the original story’s lesson.

Excess is often a problem in Ron Howard movies. Backdraft, Parenthood, and Willow all had memorable moments, but collapsed under the weight of numerous uninteresting subplots, indulgent effects scenes, and/or too much melodrama. We didn’t get to know characters enough to really care about them, because we were so busy trying to keep track of everything. (A few exceptions — Apollo 13, Cocoon, and Ransom – demonstrate that Howard is better when he reins in the spectacle and lets actors do what they do best.)

To make matters worse, this Grinch’s soundtrack is spread on like ten layers of Cheez Wiz and recycled Danny Elfman themes. Sappy, shallow, forgettable songs are thrown in, like it’s a bad Disney straight-to-video sequel. And the town of Whoville is so busy with activity that you don’t get a chance to focus on any of its details or appreciate it.

It’s a tragedy, because Jim Carrey’s work here is so good.

Some people will say that this performance is nothing new for Carrey. And I agree — Carrey as an actor has not yet demonstrated much in the way of range. He can be manic (The Mask,Dumb and Dumber) and he can be sincere when he plays damaged childlike characters (The Truman Show, Man on the Moon). But this is his greatest performance, because he’s never had a character so suited to his strengths. Carrey, above all, is great at exaggeration. He doesn’t need special effects… he is a special effect. His rubber face stretches like a Tex Avery cartoon. He could win an Olympic medal for the athletic feats he pulls off here. He makes Robin Williams look cool, calm, and collected by comparison. Friends have told me they dislike him because he’s so over-the-top, but I think that’s because, when placed in a normal movie environment, he’s just too out-of-control. Here in Seuss-land, everything around him is out-of-control, so he fits right in with his surroundings.

Not only that, but he’s delivering this performance within what must have been a stifling costume. It’s like watching Michael Jordan win a championship in a straitjacket. Rick Baker’s makeup for The Grinch may be the most brilliant creature costume I’ve ever seen. Its magic is that somehow you can’t understand how Jim Carrey got inside it. And you can’t understand how Carrey makes every part of that outfit work. There’s not a moment where you can see the seams, where you can take time to figure out how he’s making it all so real. It’s the perfect fusion of a clown and a costume. He shoves his face into the camera and sinks broken yellow teeth into that trademark improvisational wackiness. And he digs deep for a guttural monstrous voice that’s half Sean Connery, half Jimmy Stuart.

That alone could have been enough to make this film a classic. Carrey did his job. Now… just follow the story, and everything’s fine.

But after the opening 30 minutes, which are magical and exhilarating, we are yanked off the track and given a whole new twist… flashbacks of the Grinch’s childhood. Why the Grinch is so grumpy? Unrequited love, and people laughed at his ugliness. Yep. It’s as boring, as unimaginative, and as plain as an After-School Special. The marvel of Jim Carrey’s performance is that he gives us just enough of a glimpse of the Grinch’s heart so that we care about him. But then the movie doesn’t trust that to be enough, and shoves this boring, awkward, and unnecessary explanation under our nose.

Dr. Seuss books are about the outrageous, about whimsy, about where a fantasy can take you if you follow the rhyme scheme. This childhood chapter is rhymeless. It takes the Grinch far more seriously than he should ever be taken. It ruins the tone of the story. And, in spite of many great Grinch moments, it never recovers the joy of those first 30 minutes.

This “artistic license” steers the story so off-course that when the conclusion comes around, it lacks the resonance it should have. In Seuss’s story, the Grinch just hates Christmas until he understands it. In Howard’s version, the Grinch is mean because he’s angry over unrequited love, so it seems unlikely that the Christmas carols of the Whos would solve his problems. In fact, his problems aren’t solved at all. When the Grinch goes back down, supposedly full of love and a healthy heart, one of the first things he does is steal the girl and laugh vengefully at his old nemesis. No love or compassion here. This indulgent “nyah nyah-nyah nyah-nyaaaah nyah” at the rival’s expense spoils any sense we have of the Grinch becoming a compassionate soul. It is a clear sign that the storyteller doesn’t understand the story he is telling.

So in the end, I feel sorry for Jim Carrey. He is so good at his job, whether you like what he does or not. And he’s never had an opportunity to demonstrate his talents like he does here. When I pick up a copy of the video someday, I’ll fast-forward through it and watch his finest moments and then skip the rest.

Unfortunately, Ron Howard is the Grinch who stole Christmas from Jim Carrey, Dr. Seuss, and the children who deserve a better story.

My two-part reflection on The Muppet Movie, and how it changed my life, are published at Good Letters, the blog at Image. Part One / Part Two

My review of My Week with Marilyn is up at Good Letters, the daily blog at Image.

A review by Jeffrey Overstreet, originally published at The Other Journal.

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Director – James Bobin; writers - Nicholas Stoller and Jason Segel; director of photograph - Don Burgess; editor - James Thomas; music - Christophe Beck; choreography - Michael Rooney; production design - Steve Saklad; costumes - Rahel Afiley; producers - David Hoberman and Todd Lieberman. Starring - Jason Segel (Gary), Amy Adams (Mary), Chris Cooper (Tex Richman), Rashida Jones (Veronica), Jack Black (himself); and Walter, Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, the Great Gonzo, Animal, Statler and Waldorf, Swedish Chef, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker, Sam Eagle, Rowlf the Dog, Scooter, and Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem Band.Walt Disney Pictures. 1 hour 38 minutes.

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Once upon a time — 1979, to be exact — along a freeway in the southwest, a car carrying the Muppets broke down. And their pursuit of a dream (“to make millions of people happy!”) came to a crashing halt.

So they built a campfire beside their broken-down car. Kermit the Frog walked into the darkness. Rowlf the Dog sadly played a harmonica. And Fozzie Bear pointed out the obvious: “We’re not going to make the audition tomorrow.”

Then the daredevil Gonzo stepped into the spotlight… or rather, the moonlight. Instead of performing a stunt, he looked up in awe at the stars. He forgot his troubles. The magic of the cosmos threw fuel on the fire of his deepest longings. He began to sing:

“This looks familiar,” he half-whispered. “Vaguely familiar.” He went on to express his faith the he would someday be restored to a place of rightness, where dreams would be fulfilled, where he would know a sense of true belonging at last.

“You can just visit, but I plan to stay.
I’m going to go back there someday.”

And there I was, only nine years old, watching The Muppet Movie in the theater with my parents. Naive as I was, I believed I was having an experience that would change my life.

I was right.

The Muppets had been my companions, my entertainment, and my teachers on Sesame Street and The Muppet Show. But now they were on the big screen, embraced by audiences of all ages, celebrated as heroes. And instead of gloating, they were directing our attention to things that really mattered — dreams, humility, friendship, community, music, laughter, make-believe, and faith. Their story would influence the shape of the rest of my life.

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As a kid, I didn’t have many friends around, so I invested countless hours in making up whole casts of characters who would keep me company.

Largely inspired by the imaginations of A.A. Milne, Walt Disney, J.R.R. Tolkien… and above all, Jim Henson… I drew pictures, wrote stories, and made puppets out of brown paper bags and yarn and crayons and cotton balls and glue. I wanted to bring worlds to life with simple materials the way Henson did. I vividly remember the days when my savings from a small weekly allowance enabled me to purchase a real Kermit puppet and a real Animal puppet. And I still have the sets and props from homemade puppet shows I performed for my brother and a couple of neighbor kids on a puppet stage that my grandfather built for me. (That desk has been remodeled, and now it’s my home-office writing desk, where I write fantasy novels.)

The day I first saw The Muppet Movie in the theater was as memorable and influential for me as the first time I sawStar Wars. The story it told seemed important. I made me want to answer a call, like Kermit the Frog did. If Kermit could leave the swamp, go to Hollywood, and inspire the world, maybe I could someday leave Northeast Portland, discover new worlds, tell stories, and give the world something that would make lives richer, hearts more joyful. If Jim Henson could make the world a better place with a song and a sock puppet, surely I could make a difference too.

I didn’t want to go on an adventure alone. I wanted to find a fellowship of diverse and colorful personalities — friends who would be drawn along by the same dream, the way Fozzie Bear, Dr. Teeth, and Rowlf the Dog followed Kermit.

I wanted to follow Kermit’s example and put on good shows. And I did, hosting talent shows in high school, and working with a team to produce talent shows in college. I wanted my own Electric Mayhem — and I found it in college, in an improvisational comedy rock band called The Garbage Chute Flyboys, with my fellow Muppet enthusiast Todd Fadel (who is still a Muppet-influenced rock star today).

The Muppets inspired me to love the stuff of artmaking — the materials and the conventions — as much as they entertained me.

But more importantly, they impressed upon me the importance of showing love and welcome to all kinds of people. They taught me to want to be a unifying presence, not a divisive one. They taught me that how I pursue my dream, and how I treat people during that journey, are as important as any achievement. Kindness and the tireless pursuit of imaginative excellence — that’s what I learned from them.

A poster-sized portrait of Jim Henson looks at me in my office every day, and Kermit the Frog is looking over his shoulder. “Think different,” the poster says.

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Gonzo’s song follows me around, becoming more and more bittersweet as the years go by. Its meaning has expanded. It is still about the longing for heaven. But it is also about the Muppets themselves. In that world of personalities, colors, and magic, my own imagination, my own values, my own dreams took root and grew.

I haven’t been to that place since Jim Henson died, except by watching the productions he gave the world.

Don’t we all wish we could go back to that time and place?

It was a time when families could gather and enjoy the same television show, without subjecting themselves to corrosive cynicism, demeaning sarcasm, crass and lurid imagery, and a barrage of senseless stimulation. It was a warmer, happier, more joyful time, where even the sad songs were heartening in their earnestness and beauty. We had the sense that things were meant to be better… and that they could be better, with a little imagination.

But then again, no… it would be false to say that we all wish we could go back to that place. Some of us have never been there at all. Generations are growing up with no exposure to art and entertainment like the Muppets. The Muppets themselves haven’t been around for several years. In the decade after Henson’s death, his company tried to keep his characters alive with a few movies and television specials, but the characters’ personalities were fading, and the productions lacked the intelligence, humor, and personality that came so easily to the great comedy team of Jim Henson and Frank Oz.

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So when I started hearing news about a new Muppet movie, I didn’t think “going back there someday” was such a good idea.

In 1999, I’d been invited back to a galaxy far, far away… the Star Wars wonderland I’d loved as a kid… only to find flat, uninspiring storytelling and bland, forgettable personalities on a stage cluttered with gadgets designed to sell toys. (Yes, I’m still resentful, Mr. Lucas.) I didn’t want to see something else from my childhood drained of its original virtues, a bad imitation paraded out as if it were the real thing for the sake of merchandising potential.

Imagine you’d grown up with a perfect bunch of childhood friends — singing songs, drawing pictures, playing games, starting bands, imagining adventures, dreaming dreams, and laughing until you were sore. Imagine that you brought out the creative best in each other. Then imagine that something changed, and they were taken from your life. Maybe they moved away. Maybe they just disappeared. Now imagine that suddenly… after years of silence, years of sadness, and decades of adulthood, you suddenly received a letter saying that they’re coming to see you. Wouldn’t you be a little scared… scared that they’d turn out to be unfamiliar, changed, harder, cynical, messed up? Would the old joys still be possible? Or would you find smiles and laughs only in nostalgia?

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But then I began to hope.

The long-running viral marketing campaign for this film was consistently encouraging. It showed sparks of that old, madcap Muppet imagination. It had enthusiasm. And most importantly, where the post-Henson Muppet movies gave us characters who looked like the original characters but didn’t act or sound like them, the Muppets in these viral videos seemed wonderfully familiar.

So, I entered the theater for The Muppets with some considerable anxiety.

And as I looked around at the theater packed with children, I realized that if the movie was going to be successful, it was going to have to do more than just prove to me that the heartbeat of the Muppets could be jump-started. It was going to have to inspire a whole new generation of youngsters who are accustomed to frantic entertainment.

Ten minutes into The Muppets, the audience — adults and children alike — were laughing and having a grand time. And I began to feel surprise, then relief, and then an increasingly giddy kind of joy.

I’m reminded of another line from Gonzo’s song: “There’s not a word yet / for old friends who’ve just met.” No, there isn’t. But if there was, I’d use it here. I felt I was enjoying something made by true kindred spirits. You can tell that these filmmakers grew up cherishing what was best about the Muppets. They’ve filled their movie with knowing references to The Muppet Show and The Muppet Movie. And while the voices of the original characters aren’t exactly right (how could they be?), their personalities and idiosyncrasies are impressively restored. Henson’s rare combination of generosity, soulfulness, kindness, creativity, and madness defined everything he made, and this is the first post-Henson Muppet production to strike the same balance. From the script to the colors to the body language, it all has Henson’s heartbeat.

“This looks familiar… very familiar…” indeed.

By the time the credits rolled, I was so satisfied that I couldn’t help but think, “This is what Star Wars fans hoped to feel when they lined up for the prequels. They wanted to go back to a world they loved, not because they’re merely nostalgic, but because they wanted to believe that the journey could continue, and that they could go to new places that would restore that sense of wonder, with adventurers whose company they cherished.

While the movie celebrates this homecoming by reviving Kermit’s beloved theme song “The Rainbow Connection”, I left the theatre thinking about Gonzo’s song. The Muppets took me back to a place I’d thought was gone, and showed me that there are new adventures to be enjoyed there.

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Directed by James Bobin (of Flight of the Conchords), The Muppets begins by introducing us to a new Muppet named Walter and his human brother, Gary (Jason Segel).

We learn that Gary and Walter grew up as big fans of the Muppets. And the film’s opening scenes feature glimpses of the original Muppet Show, which are remarkably powerful in reminding us of the contagious, guilt-free joy of Henson’s world.

Soon, we’re off on a quest with Walter, Gary, and Gary’s girlfriend Amy to visit the original Muppet studio in Los Angeles.

Here, the movie brilliantly toys with our emotions, illustrating what many of us have felt — the void where Henson’s imagination once flourished. For Muppet Studios is run-down, falling apart, a shambles.

And yes — in a story as old as the movies — the beloved studio is about to be taken over by an oil tycoon named Tex Richman (Chris Cooper, in an endearingly self-effacing and enthusiastic performance).

So Walter, Gary, and Amy have to educate Kermit (brought back to life brilliantly by Steve Whitmire) about his seemingly doomed legacy, inspire him to round up the original gang, and put together a variety-show telethon that will raise the money to save both the studio and the Jim Henson legacy.

How they get the band back together, and what they do to put on a show worthy of Henson’s memory… well, that’s best left for you to discover.

But I can tell you that it is a consistently funny, surprisingly creative adventure full of celebrity cameos (like the original Muppet Movie) and catchy songs. There may not be a new song to compare with the fantastic melodies and lyrics Paul Williams brought to the original movie, but the film does bring back “The Rainbow Connection” in a way that doesn’t seem cheap or sentimental.

Like most Muppet movies, The Muppets has some ideas that work better than others.

There are so many high points, I won’t come close to noting them all. Right now, I’m thinking of

• Mary’s unusual elementary school classroom;
• Kermit’s heartbreaking song about friends that now live only as “pictures in my head”;
• the revelation of the “standard rich and famous contract” that Orson Welles signed in The Muppet Movie;
• the montage in which Kermit and Fozzie track down the rest of their old friends in various locations and vocations, the best of which is their reunion with Rowlf the Dog (one of the first Muppets ever on television);
• the hilarious identity crisis that Gary suffers as he sings “Am I man or a Muppet?”;
• the enthusiastic cameos by Mickey Rooney, Feist, Alan Arkin, Jack Black, and others;
• the unconventional performances of familiar rock and pop songs by Cee-lo Green and Nirvana.

The movie doesn’t really know what to do with its female human lead. As Mary, Amy Adams fits right into the Muppet world. The same winsome playfulness that made her the perfect leading lady in Enchanted makes her seem right at home in the company of Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear.

In this story, she exists primarily to force a question for Gary: Will he follow Walter and dedicate his life to the Muppets? Or will he apply what he has learned from the Muppets to his own life? The movie suggests that the lessons and virtues of the Muppets’ storyline are perfectly relevant in the life of a grown man: Loyalty, kindness, reconciliation, big dreams. In a world where Muppets can defy the forces of cynicism and exploitation, maybe a man can find the courage to commit himself to the ideal of marriage.

But there can be no satisfying resolution without tension, and as the distance grows between Mary and Gary to create that tension, the movie can’t find anything interesting to do with her. She engages in a “Me Party” — a tangent of self-indulgence that I expected would become an over-the-top lampoon of self-centered individualism. (Wouldn’t it have been great if Beaker had shown us a MePhone, a MePod, and a MePad?) But it doesn’t… it’s just a superfluous song and dance number that draws a feeble connection between Mary and Miss Piggy.

Piggy, too, fumbles around in this storyline. Her on-again/off-again relationship with Kermit has always been played for laughs, but here it is taken a little too seriously.

The oil tycoon subplot is, alas, the film’s weakest thread. Cooper gives the role his all, and he’s a blast to watch. But after the storytellers establish him as a malevolent businessman, they don’t know what to do with him. He’s left fumbling for ways to disrupt the Muppets’ fundraising production. He stops looking scary and ends up looking kind of pathetic. The conflict’s resolution doesn’t compare well to the suspenseful showdown at the end of The Muppet Movie, which led to a hilarious climax.

But that’s the film’s one and only big problem — and it’s very easy to forgive, since Bobin, Segel, and company have achieved what seemed so impossible.

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Jason Segel has been very open, all along the way, about his passion for this project. I’m grateful that a kindred spirit worked so hard to give back to the Muppets the qualities that made them such a wonder in the first place. They brought the beloved characters back in a way that seemed real.

I like the way Drew McWeeny at HitFix put it: “The sense of humor here is warm and playful and occasionally surreal, and there’s not a mean bone in its body.” That just goes to show that somebody learned good lessons from Jim Henson himself.

I also agree with my favorite film reviewer, Steven Greydanus, who points out, “The Muppets is not trying to be hip and edgy, or at least any hipper and edgier than the Muppets ever were. This is quite deliberately not a reboot or reimagining or any such thing. Perhaps we can call it a revisiting. Like this summer’s charming Winnie the Pooh(also from Disney), The Muppets is a happy throwback, very much of a piece with material that my generation grew up with, eclipsing the lameness of recent direct-to-video efforts. Who would have thought two classic family franchises that have lain fallow for so long would be reborn in the same year?”

Wonder of wonders — my old friends are back. They’re older, a little weatherbeaten, and maybe their voices have changed. But you could say the same thing about me.

If the Muppets can still put on a good show in a world as dark and broken as this, maybe a guy as disillusioned and cynical as me can get his act together too. I need all the hope and inspiration I can get.

My thanks to the filmmakers, screenwriters, and Muppet performers who have made another substantial contribution to the cause of the lovers, the dreamers and me.

And thanks as well for inspiring the little boy who sat next to me. All of five years old, he was wide-eyed, enthralled, throughout. And with about fifteen minutes left in the film, he declared to the whole audience, “This is my favorite show!”

I know exactly how he feels.

A brief review by Jeffrey Overstreet, originally posted in February 2001.

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Director – Im Kwon Taek; writer – Kim Myoung Kon; based on “Chunyang,” the pansori song by Cho Sang Hyun; in Korean, with English subtitles; director of photography – Jung Il Sung; editor – Park Soon Duk; music – Kim Jung Gil; art director – Min Un Ok; producer – Lee Tae Won. Starring – Lee Hae Eun (Hyangdan), Lee Hae Ryong (Lord of Soonchun), Kim Hak Yong (Pangja), Lee Hyo Jung (Chunhyang), Choi Jin Young (Governor Lee), Gok Jun Hwam (Lord of Okgwa), Lee Jung Hun (Governor Byun), Yoon Keun Mo (Lord of Goksung), Hong Kyung Yeun (Kisaeng Leader), Kim Sung Nyu (Wolmae) and Cho Seung Woo (Mongryong). Lot 47 Films. 120 minutes.

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Chunhyang feels like an ancient fairy tale that has been given a fresh coat of paint. Unfortunately, the paint is the most interesting part, as the story is told broad strokes and offers few surprises.

It’s about a young prince who falls in love with a courtesan’s daughter, and pledges his everlasting love to her. When he is called away because of his father’s work, young Chunhyang is deeply troubled. Things get worse when a new governor moves in and demands that she be his courtesan.

The story is highly predictable, and the characters fail to become more than colorful archetypes. But wow… “colorful” is the way to describe this gorgeous, elaborate imagery.

Your opinion of this film will probably rise or fall based on your reaction to its style: it is presented like opera, a story in which small realistic details of day to day are underplayed, while emotions are blown up huge and loud. The story is narrated by an expressive, gravelly voiced storyteller who sings the narration. I realize that this is a traditional form of storytelling, but I found the narrator distracting and intrusive, and wanted to know more about the characters.

Thus, while the story “rang true” as a parable, the storytelling failed to engage me. The only thing that kept me watching was the colorful, graceful cinematography.

My review of Martha Marcy May Marlene is up at Good Letters, the blog for Image journal.