All posts by One Guys Opinion

Dr. Frank Swietek is Associate Professor of History at the University of Dallas, where he is regarded as a particularly tough grader. He has been the film critic of the University News since 1988, and has discussed movies on air at KRLD-AM (Dallas) and KOMO-AM (Seattle). He is also the Founding President of the Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics' Association, a group of print and broadcast journalists covering film in the Metroplex area, and was a charter member of the Society of Texas Film Critics. Dr. Swietek is a member of the Online Film Critics Society (OFCS). He was instrumental in the creation of the Lone Star Awards, which, through the efforts of the Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Film Commission, give recognition annually to the best feature films and television programs produced in Texas.
Archived Movies

PADDINGTON

Grade: A-

You might think of Paul King’s adaptation of Michael Bond’s books about an accident-prone Peruvian bear as the polar opposite of “Ted”—a combination of live-action and CGI in which the animated ursine star is as lovable and sweet-tempered as Seth McFarlane’s is nasty and foul-mouthed. “Paddington” is thoroughly charming but evinces a British sensibility that might put off American audiences—which would be a shame, since this is the best family movie of its kind since “Babe.”

Of course, King’s screenplay has had to impose a narrative on the rambling, anecdotal stories in Bond’s series. And the one he selected, typically of children’s movies nowadays, involves an evil villain anxious to capture the gentle beast for nefarious purposes, combined with a message about the meaning of family. While the scenario seems trite—and in fact is—King manages it with a light touch that makes it more than palatable. He also invests it with moments of delightfully understated deadpan humor, as well as clever cinematic allusions and slapstick episodes that at their best recall the routines Peter Sellers and Blake Edwards pulled off in the Inspector Clouseau comedies (particularly since the bear’s hat looks a lot like the inspector’s). King even manages to add a touch of pathos to the mix by referring gently to the immigrant experience—not just in terms of Paddington’s exile from his home but by reference at one point to the Kindertransport that saved Jewish children from the Nazis in the late 1930s. And to top it all off, like the icing on an elaborately-decorated cake, he clothes the picture in a lusciously colorful production design (the work Gary Williamson, with assists from art directors Justin Brown and Stephen Lawrence and set decorator Cathy Cosgrove) that, in its most intricate instances, might be mistaken for scenes from “The Grand Budapest Hotel.”

From the narrative standpoint King begins by adding a nice backstory for the bear, a period prologue in which an intrepid explorer named Montgomery Clyde (Tim Downie) finds the cub’s relatives and teaches them English—and a love of orange marmalade—before returning home. Years later, the little bear (voiced by Ben Whishaw)—not yet called Paddington, of course—lives happily with his elderly Uncle Pastuzo (Michael Gambon) and Aunt Lucy (Imelda Staunton). But an earthquake carries off Pastuzo, and Lucy, ready for the old bear retirement home, helps her nephew stow away on a ship bound for London, where Clyde assured them they’d always find a warm welcome.

Our hero finds the city much less inviting that he expected. Not that people are taken aback by a talking bear (one of the best jokes occurs when a policeman, asked to put out an APB on a lost bear in a blue coat and red hat, remarks that it’s not much to go on)—they just ignore him. All, that is, except quirky Mary Brown (Sally Hawkins), arriving at Paddington Station from a vacation trip with her far less gregarious husband Henry (Hugh Bonneville) and their children Judy (Madeleine Harris) and Jonathan (Samuel Joslin). Though Henry, a by-the-book insurance risk assessor who sees the bear as trouble in the making, protests, Mary insists they take him home for the night, something that rather delights adventurous Jonathan but irks standoffish, easily embarrassed Judy.

It turns out that Henry’s fears weren’t misplaced, since Paddington—as Mary has named him—is quickly responsible for the flooding of the Browns’ bathroom in the first of the film’s slapstick set-pieces (a second involves his high-flying capture of a pickpocket). And it becomes apparent that Clyde will be difficult to locate, especially since the country’s scientific elite has expunged his expedition to Peru from the historical record. But with a little assist from Mr. Gruber (Jim Broadbent), an elderly Jewish antiques dealer, and Henry’s willingness to go to great lengths to help (the English love of men in drag for comic effect comes into play here), they fasten onto a hopeful trail. Unfortunately, by that time a blonde-banged taxidermist named Millicent (Nicole Kidman) is on Paddington’s tail, determined to add him to the exhibit of stuffed unusual species in the Natural History Museum. With the help of the Browns’ snoopy, lascivious neighbor Mr. Curry (Peter Capaldi), she almost captures the bear, in a sequence whose Rube Goldberg properties can’t go unnoticed, and later actually does. But of course the Brown family—including live-in relative Mrs. Bird (Julie Waters), a neat-freak old biddy who correctly diagnoses the problems in the household that Paddington has been instrumental in solving—come to the rescue (cue echoes of “Mission: Impossible”), bonding in the process.

King manages an almost perfect tone for this cheerful romp, which manages to be faithful to Bond without turning Paddington into just a mild relative of Winnie the Pooh. To be sure, despite Kidman’s game turn at doing a Fraulein Nazi type, the kidnap-and-escape business has a recycled air. But even the bits of business aimed at kids’ taste for, shall we say, icky stuff is handled gingerly, as in a sequence involving Paddington’s introduction to a toothbrush, or a trip into the sewers. And the cast show real comic chops, with Bonneville replacing his “Downton Abbey” duds for a dress, Hawkins and Walters pleasantly dotty and even the kids avoiding obnoxiousness. Capaldi suffers a bit from becoming Millicent’s confederate, but Broadbent, Downie and Matt Lucas (as a corpulent cabbie) are absolutely on target, and the voice work—especially by Whishaw, whose timid tone is perfect, but also by Gambon and Staunton—is excellent.

Even those who’ve never been introduced to Bond’s bear—children and adults both—should find “Paddington” droll and delightful.

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TAKEN 3

He may not be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but ex-CIA agent Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson) has come awfully close to such superhuman feats in the previous installments of Luc Besson’s “Taken” series, and he’s at it again in this third go-around. There’s not much that’s new in “Taken 3”—it’s basically just another extended chase movie, one far longer–and sillier–than a Road Runner cartoon. The wrinkle this time is that Mills isn’t rushing about to save somebody who’s been kidnapped, but to prove his own innocence after he’s framed for killing his ex-wife Lenore (Famke Janssen). (The rationale behind the plot, spelled out rather blithely at the close, is both convoluted and idiotic.) The setting is more confined as well, being the area around Los Angeles rather than an international swath of territory.

But those changes hardly present an obstacle to Besson and his director Olivier Megaton’s serving up more of the same menu that made Neeson an action star late in his career. Unfortunately, it’s beginning to take a toll: he often looks as tired as Harrison Ford did in his later action vehicles. Still, with help from stuntmen and editors Audrey Simonaud and Nicolas Trembasiewicz, Neeson’s Mills negotiates all the physical demands, eluding capture by either the cops, led by Detective Frank Dotzler (Forest Whitaker) while protecting his daughter Kim (Maggie Grace) and tracking down, and dealing severely with, the true malefactors.

In the earlier installments, of course, the nasty guys were Albanians, but it’s characteristic of the even less imaginative quality of this installment that the villain is that most hackneyed of figures, a nasty Russian mobster called Oleg Malankov (Sam Spruell). The character is provided with an extraordinarily inane flashback to explain his brutality, but it doesn’t really distinguish him much from the Russian gangster, for example, that Marton Csokas recently played in “The Equalizer.” Once you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all, and we’ve seen far too many.

“Taken 3” lacks the destructive mayhem of its predecessors: perhaps Los Angeles officials were less ready to allow the moviemakers to plow through quite as much real estate as those in Paris and Istanbul were. The relative lack of pyrotechnic pizzazz—there are a couple of explosions, but they’re pretty tame—will probably disappoint fans of the series, who will probably also react to the intrusive meetings Bryan arranges with Kim, and the sequences of Dotzler, a distinctly offbeat fellow, brooding over the case (which are dull despite Whitaker’s attempt to liven them up with some hammy bits of business), with much the same attitude that kids once did to the romantic interludes in old cowboy movies. The appearances of Dougray Scott as Kim’s sleazeball stepfather—whose involvement in all the shenanigans is pretty obvious from the movie’s prologue—have the same effect; one wants to yell at Megaton to just get on with it already—advice which, had he heeded it, would certainly have helped to reduce the movie’s unsuitably long running-time.

Still, one has to give Neeson his due: his broad shoulders have carried these dim-witted Besson creations far further than anybody could have expected. And Grace’s Kim, for what it’s worth, has matured somewhat over the course of the pictures; the girl is less of an irritating twit than she was at the start, even if the problem she’s gotten into with her boyfriend—in this case, a likable fellow played by Jonny Weston—adds a mawkish touch the proceedings don’t need. As for Spruell, he chews the scenery in predictably overripe fashion. So does Scott. Janssen, meanwhile, has little more than a cameo.

For a franchise that’s grossed hundreds of millions of dollars, the production values here are pretty awful: the action sequences—particularly the car chases—are very badly choreographed, with thoroughly mediocre visual effects, and both they and the numerous hand-to-hand combat scenes are marred by the cruelly claustrophobic cinematography of Eric Kress, for whom close-ups appear to be default mode, made even worse by the hyper, often blurry editing. Except for some nighttime shots of the city, Kress makes poor use of the L.A. locations, too, while Nathaniel Mechaly’s score is a chain of musical clichés.

After all the mayhem they’ve endured over the course of three films, one supposes that Bryan and Kim are in need of some quality vacation time for father-daughter bonding. One can imagine, therefore, that they’ll go off on a cruise (perhaps with boyfriend along), only to find the ship taken over by modern-day pirates. Naturally the Mills would swing into action and…. No, that would be ridiculous—almost as ridiculous as what transpires in “Taken 3.” Anyway, the advertising tag-line of this movie is, “It ends here.” And we all know how committed franchise-makers are to keeping such pledges of finality.