The Book of Henry (2017)

29 Wednesday Nov 2017

Tags

Brain tumour, Child abuse, Colin Trevorrow, Comedy, Drama, Jacob Tremblay, Jaeden Lieberher, Naomi Watts, Review, Sarah Silverman

D: Colin Trevorrow / 103m

Cast: Naomi Watts, Jaeden Lieberher, Jacob Tremblay, Sarah Silverman, Dean Norris, Lee Pace, Maddie Ziegler, Bobby Moynihan, Tonya Pinkins, Geraldine Hughes

A movie that inspires audiences to stare at it with the phrase, “say what?” firmly embedded at the forefront of their minds, The Book of Henry is both shockingly bad and hugely enjoyable at the same time (though it’s not quite the kind of movie that’s “so bad it’s good”). This may seem like a contradiction, but this could easily be many people’s idea of a guilty pleasure, a movie that you know from the start is pretty awful but which you can still derive an awful lot of pleasure from. The first draft was written in 1998 by author and screenwriter Gregg Hurwitz, and you can believe that the final screenplay as used in the movie, is exactly the same draft. And on this evidence, you can perhaps understand also why director Colin Trevorrow isn’t going to be at the helm of Star Wars Episode IX.

Shying away – perhaps deliberately – from creating a tonally consistent narrative, The Book of Henry sets itself up initially as a bucolic drama dealing with the ups and downs of the Carpenter family: single mother Susan (Watts), eleven year old whizzkid Henry (Lieberher), and younger son Peter (Tremblay). Susan works at a diner and dreams of writing and illustrating children’s books. Henry acts as the de facto man of the house, and is something of a financial genius, having invested very successfully in the stock market (Susan literally has no idea how wealthy they are as a family which is why she continues to work at the diner). And Peter is bullied at school, though Henry always comes to his rescue. Add their neighbour’s stepdaughter, Christina (Ziegler), into the mix as a kind of surrogate daughter/sister, and you have a family bordering on dysfunctional but in a winning, adorable way that makes you want to ruffle their hair and remark on how winning and adorable they are.

So far, so cute. But into every sunny life some shadows must appear, and it’s not long before Henry realises that Christina is being abused by her stepdad, Glenn (Norris). However, he’s the local police commissioner, and he has connections within social services, so Henry’s attempts to involve them and save Christina fail at the first hurdle. And before he can do anything more, he’s struck down by a brain tumour and promptly dies. But Henry being such a whizzkid (and apparently having had far more time on his hands than most eleven year olds), he’s not about to let Glenn off the hook. Before he dies, he compiles a book in which he leaves instructions for his mother to… contact and convince social services to investigate Glenn? Gather further evidence to prove her case? Put Glenn on notice that if he continues he’ll be exposed for the paedophile he is? Well, actually, no. As Peter so aptly puts it when he first looks at the book, “Henry wants us to kill Glenn!”

And so the movie lurches from bucolic family drama to child in danger drama to disease of the week melodrama, and all the way to vigilante thriller in little over an hour. Except none of these tonal shifts work as an organic whole. It’s as if the movie feels compelled to hit the restart button every fifteen minutes or so. And while it does so, it drops a handful of sub-plots and characters in and out of the mix at random, from Susan’s co-worker, Sheila (Silverman) and her problems with alcohol, to the bullying Peter experiences at school (which happens once… and that’s it). Hurwitz’s script is like a melting pot of ideas and themes and narrative devices all shoehorned into the smallest space available and then left to fight it out amongst themselves for the best amount of breathing space. One classic example: the school principal (Pinkins) dismisses Henry’s concerns about Christina when he raises them, but later is convinced by the interpretative power of dance (no, really). And then there’s the sight of Susan in a treehouse with a sniper rifle…

So absurd and so silly is The Book of Henry, the only way to approach it is as a drama that forgot it was meant to be a comedy. If you do, and it really is the best way to approach it, then the movie can be enjoyed despite its being a terrible mess that’s only on nodding terms with credibility. There are laughs to be had – deliberate and otherwise – and a whole raft of scenes that feel like filler (see how many times Susan covers over Peter, or the leaves in her yard are mentioned), but still the movie exerts a strange fascination, like a road traffic accident that you just can’t look away from. Hurwitz’s script, combined with Trevorrow’s meandering sense of direction, leaves the movie high and dry and static in its efforts to be effective, and the only area in which it does succeed is in its use of its Hudson Valley locations, all beautifully rendered by John Schwartzman’s richly autumnal cinematography.

The performances are a mixed bunch also. Watts has a good grasp of her character’s interior life, but it’s a shame that Susan’s exterior life is so bland and uninteresting. Aspects of Lieberher’s performance might prompt viewers to believe that Henry is on the spectrum, while Tremblay, the go-to child actor right now, is otherwise kept firmly in the background, good for a couple of scenes of emotional poignancy but little else. Spare a thought too for Silverman playing blowsy with a heart of gold, and Pace as the doctor who keeps popping up and may, at some distant point when the movie is over and done, prove to be Susan’s next love interest. The cast as a whole are admirably committed to the material, and it is fun watching them trying to legitimise some of the more absurdist moments in the script, but when there’s more enjoyment to be had from watching them fail than succeed then it’s time to ‘fess up and admit that things just haven’t worked out in the way that the producers would have hoped for.

Rating: 4/10 – silly, funny, and endlessly entertaining in all the wrong ways, The Book of Henry has at least one unfulfilled potential: that of being a cult midnight movie where the audience interacts with it a la The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975); such a misfire that it has to be seen to be believed, it’s a movie that doesn’t know when to rein in its ridiculous nature, but in failing to do so (and entirely against the odds), makes itself into perhaps the most unlikeliest must-see movie of 2017.

Uh-Oh! Here Comes Summer! Jurassic World (2015) and Terminator Genisys (2015)

03 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Alan Taylor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bryce Dallas Howard, Chris Pratt, Colin Trevorrow, Dinosaurs, Emilia Clarke, Indominus Rex, InGen, Irrfan Khan, Isla Nubar, J.K. Simmons, Jai Courtney, Jake Johnson, Jason Clarke, Judgment Day, Raptors, Sarah Connor, Sequels, Skynet, T-1000, T-800, Terminators, Vincent D'Onofrio

The third and fourth sequels in their respective franchises, Jurassic World and Terminator Genisys are that rare combination: reboots that feed off the original movies. And you could argue that they’re also remakes, in that they take the basic plots of those original movies and put their own – hopefully – nifty spins on them. But while there’s a definite fan base for both series, which means both movies should do well at the box office (enough to generate further sequels), is there enough “new stuff” in these movies to actually warrant seeing them in the first place, or getting excited about any future releases that are in the pipeline? (And let me say just now, that both movies have ensured that the possibility of further entries in both franchises will be an absolute certainty.)

Jurassic World (2015) / D: Colin Trevorrow / 124m

Cast: Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Vincent D’Onofrio, Irrfan Khan, Ty Simpkins, Nick Robinson, Jake Johnson, Omar Sy, BD Wong, Judy Greer, Lauren Lapkus

Twenty-two years on from the disastrous attempt by John Hammond to open the world’s first dinosaur theme park, his dream has become a paying reality, but one that needs ever more impressive dinosaurs to keep visitors coming. Thanks to the backing of the park’s owner, Masrani (Khan), and the scientists responsible for cloning the park’s main attractions – led by Dr Henry Wu (Wong) – each new attraction strays further and further from the original concept of replicating the dinosaurs everyone is aware of. Now, Wu and his team have designed a new dinosaur, the so-called Indominus Rex, an intelligent, über-predator that is taller than a T. Rex and even more deadly.

When animal behavioural specialist Owen Grady (Pratt) is called in to assess the new dinosaur’s readiness for being shown to the public, he and park manager Claire (Howard) are unprepared for just how intelligent the Indominus Rex is; soon it escapes and begins to wreak havoc across the island. With an evacuation of over twenty thousand tourists going ahead, including Claire’s nephews Gray (Simpkins) and Zach (Robinson) who have strayed off the normal tourist track, Grady and Claire must try to keep everyone safe, as well as dealing with parent company InGen’s local representative, Hoskins (D’Onofrio), who sees Indominus Rex’s escape as a chance to prove that raptors – who have been trained by Grady – can be used as militarised weapons. But his strategy backfires, leaving everyone at risk from Indominus Rex and the raptors.

Given that Jurassic Park III (2001) was pretty much dismissed as so much dino guano on its release, the idea of making a fourth movie always seemed like a triumph of optimism over experience. And yet, Jurassic World is a triumph – albeit a small scale one – and while it doesn’t offer us anything really new (aside from Grady’s instinctive, respect-driven relationship with the raptors), it does make a lot of things feel fresher than they have any right to be. This is essentially a retread of the first movie, with Gray and Zach as our guides to the park’s wonders (and perils), the fiercest dinosaur in the park getting loose, and the humans relying on other dinosaurs to take down the big bad and save the day. It’s not a bad concept – after all, it worked the first time around – but despite how well the movie has been put together, it’s still a fun ride that just misses out on providing that much needed wow factor.

Part of the problem is that the movie makers have taken the bits of Jurassic Park (1993) that worked and added some stuff that doesn’t. Do we really need to see yet another misogynistic portrayal of a relationship, where the woman changes for the man and not the other way round? Do we really need to hear a scientist blame the moneyman for not paying attention when the scientist created something unethical? And do we really need to hear deathless lines such as “We have an asset out of containment” or “It can camouflage!” (a trick the Indominus Rex pulls off just the once, by the way, when it’s convenient to the narrative). Of course we don’t, but because this isn’t a straight remake, but a reboot/update/witting homage, that’s what we get. For all that the movie is technically well made, and looks fantastic in IMAX 3D, it’s still a retread, and lacks the thrills we need to invest in it properly (and that’s without the paper-thin characters, from the stereotypically neanderthal Hoskins, to the annoying dweeb in the park’s Control Centre (Johnson). In short, the movie lacks the depth necessary to make us care about it, and without that depth, it just becomes another superficial ride the viewer will forget without realising it.

Rating: 6/10 – another summer blockbuster that doesn’t do enough to justify its budget or hype, Jurassic World is like an old friend regaling you with a story you’ve heard a thousand times before; maybe this will work better as the intro to a bigger story and plot, but if not, then this is just another disappointing entry in that ever growing cache of movies known as the Unnecessary Sequel.

Terminator Genisys (2015) / D: Alan Taylor / 126m

Cast: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jason Clarke, Emilia Clarke, Jai Courtney, J.K. Simmons, Dayo Okeniyi, Matt Smith, Courtney B. Vance, Byung-hun Lee, Michael Gladis, Sandrine Holt

In 2029, the human resistance, led by John Connor (Clarke), is on the verge of defeating Skynet and its machines. But it also needs to destroy Skynet’s last chance of avoiding defeat: a time displacement machine. When John reaches the site, though, he learns that Skynet has sent a terminator back to 1984 in order to kill his mother, Sarah Connor (Clarke); with her dead, John won’t be born and won’t be able to lead the resistance to victory. Knowing his past and what needs to be done, he agrees to let Kyle Reese (Courtney) travel back as well and keep Sarah safe. As the machine begins to work, though, Kyle sees John being attacked by a terminator.

When Kyle arrives in 1984 he finds himself being hunted by a T-1000 (Lee) before being rescued by Sarah – and a T-800 (Schwarzenegger). Sarah tells Kyle that the T-800 was sent to protect her when she was nine years old, but that she doesn’t know who sent it. With the T-1000 in constant pursuit, the trio do their best to work out why this timeline is now so different from the one that John has always known. Kyle is sure that it has something to with visions he’s been having of a future that hasn’t been destroyed by Skynet, a future that will still exist in 2017, the year that Skynet – in this timeline – launches the nuclear missiles that will seal Man’s fate. He persuades Sarah to travel with him to 2017 using a time displacement machine that she has built with the T-800’s aid.

However, their arrival in 2017 leads to their being arrested. But at the police station, an even greater surprise awaits them: the arrival of John…

As Arnold Schwarzenegger has said all along, “I’ll be back”, and here he is, older, greyer, slower, with a few motor skills issues, but as he also says, “not obsolete”. It’s a clever distinction that says as much about the actor as it does the character of the T-800, giving us an aging Terminator and providing a perfectly acceptable reason for the Austrian Oak to be involved. But while he’s the star of the show, it’s also noticeable that he’s sidelined a lot of the time, giving both Clarkes, and Courtney, the chance to carry the movie in their iconic star’s absence. That they don’t is down to a script that, as with Jurassic World, wants to be as much as a retread of its progenitor as it does an entirely new instalment. As a result, the need to include what might be generously termed “fan moments” – “Come with me if you want to live” – often means a narrative that struggles to find its own identity.

There’s the germ of a great idea here, predicated on the series’ idea that “the future isn’t set”, but its revisionist version of 1984, complete with Schwarzenegger taking on his younger self (one of the movie’s better ideas), devolves into an extended chase sequence that rehashes elements from Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), and acts as a kind of Terminator Greatest Hits. It’s all effectively staged by director Alan Taylor, but the sense of déjà vu persists throughout, making the screenwriters’ efforts to give us something new all the more disappointing. Even moving the action to 2017 is less than inspiring, not even allowing for a change of scenery or approach, but canny enough to include J.K. Simmons’ light relief, and change the thrilling truck chase from T2 to an unexciting helicopter pursuit. As with the trip to Isla Nubar, it’s all very professionally done, but with that one all-important ingredient still missing: something to make the viewer go “wow”.

Rating: 6/10 – as fourth sequels go, Terminator Genisys is a vast improvement on the last two instalments but remains very much a missed opportunity; with the way open for another sequel it’s to be hoped that it’ll be more original than this, and will take the kind of risks that the first movie made in order to be successful.