Penelope (2006, Mark Palansky), the family-friendly version

Between film festival premiere and eventual U.S. release, Penelope went from 104 minutes to just under ninety, apparently to get a family-friendly PG release, which makes sense since it’s based on a kids’ book. Except it’s not. Leslie Caveny’s screenplay is an original, meaning some of the film’s problems no longer have reasonable excuses.

Penelope is about twenty-five-year-old Christina Ricci. She’s a blue blood who lives in a fairy tale land. And she has the nose of a pig. Her ancestor threw over his pregnant maid girlfriend hundreds of years ago and married rich. The girlfriend killed herself and her mom, the town witch, cursed Ricci’s family. It just took hundreds of years for the curse to go active—the first female born will have “the face of a pig” until “one of her own kind” loves her.

Ricci’s parents are Catherine O’Hara and Richard E. Grant. Grant’s playing an American. Most of the Brits play Americans. Penelope’s urban fairytale land takes place in a British Manhattan. Maybe it’s in the universe where the U.S. lost the revolution and the American elite suck up to the British–much better movie.

Sadly, O’Hara’s not playing a Brit. It’d be hilarious. She’s the overbearing mom who wants Ricci to get married so she no longer has a pig’s face. Except Ricci doesn’t have a pig’s face, she has a pig’s nose–and pig-ish ears. We never see the ears. Will Ricci break the curse with true love from pauper James McAvoy or moneyed love with loathsome Simon Wood? Will it even matter?

Part of the gag is anytime a prospective bachelor meets Ricci, upon seeing her face, he runs away. The only one not to run is McAvoy, first because he doesn’t see her, then because he’s… transfixed. I assumed Penelope was based on a kids’ book because the only way the story makes sense is if, in the book, Ricci’s actually got a pig face. Then the story’s about some dude loving her for the real her, which has the added texture of Ricci and O’Hara’s most frequent repeat conversation being about how Ricci isn’t really herself until she loses the nose.

Except. It’s just a big, pushed-up nose. It’s a prosthetic. It’s not like it moves around. It’s not like it’s not well-kept. The movie also misses a really obvious opportunity about Ricci’s first kiss, though maybe in the original cut, there’s another one.

Ricci tries her best to act without being able to use half her face, thanks to the prosthetic. Her eyebrow work is phenomenal. Though there’s nothing she can do with the part, not with the writing, her costars, or the directing.

Besides Ricci, the best performances are Reese Witherspoon (who produced Penelope and, given selling her production company for a billion dollars, clearly got better at it after this movie) and Peter Dinklage. Witherspoon’s not bad, but she’s not successful either. I’m not even sure—in the ninety-minute cut—Penelope even passes Bechdel. It definitely doesn’t because even if Witherspoon has a name when she meets Ricci… Ricci doesn’t have a name because she’s incognito. Witherspoon’s in it for a couple scenes.

Dinklage is bad.

He’s just not as bad as everyone else. O’Hara’s in a similar position to Ricci, except with an unlikable character. She’s just the overbearing mom. Grant and McAvoy are atrocious. They’re both doing American accents, and they’re both terrible at them. Sometimes when he’s quiet, Grant seems like he’ll be good when he speaks (he isn’t, but seems like it). McAvoy’s consistently atrocious.

And then there’s Simon Woods as the British blue-blood who runs away from Ricci and then teams up with paparazzi Dinklage to out the freak in the newspapers.

Penelope has a minor newspaper subplot and doesn’t even know how to do newspaper printing montages. Director Palansky is full-stop incompetent. With the actors, with the composition, with the tone, with okaying the montages. Even a slightly better director would’ve helped immensely. Palansky’s only good moments are because his crew isn’t wholly inept.

Someone could’ve gotten some hash out of Penelope—no pun (though there are endless pork-related puns in the film, and none of them are funny, and we never even see how they affect Ricci because it’s so poorly done). But not Palansky. Not without a profound rewrite. You could even keep the cast (maybe not Woods).

Or just give Ricci something where she gets to use the brows.

Loki (2021) s01e05 – Journey Into Mystery

Journey Into Mystery is simultaneously the cheapest “Loki”—though not the special effects, the CGI composites are solid (for most of it; oh, and the fight scene is profoundly bad), but narratively speaking (it entirely cops out on last episode’s big moves)—and the best, because it guest stars Richard E. Grant as a Loki variant.

There are a bunch of Loki variants in the episode, which takes place at the end of time (sadly no cameos from John Simm or David Tenant). The end of time is apparently the planet Earth with a bunch of slightly aged trash on it. Working cars—even though the gas wouldn’t work but whatever—and then moss-encrusted buses. Basically Tom Cruise’s Oblivion movie or WALL-E to keep it in house. There are rival gangs of Lokis (Tom Hiddleston plays a couple of them but the majority are either named guest stars or dialogue-less extras) trying to survive a giant cloud demon. The end of time is where you go after the TVA prunes you from existence and then the giant cloud demon eats you. Giant cloud demon does not eat, for example, cars, buses, bunkers, or battleships. Just the little people populating them.

Sadly I think next episode is going to explain it all and I’m curious if my prediction’s going to hold.

Anyway. So while Grant, the couple Hiddlestons, kid Loki Jack Veal, and warrior Loki Deobia Oparei try to survive everyone betraying everyone else because they’re Lokis, Sophia Di Martino is busy maybe teaming up with Gugu Mbatha-Raw to figure out the big secret after last episode’s reveals. They’re delaying the explanation—Mbatha-Raw might be a villain (and, even with Tom Kauffman’s profoundly insipid writing, a good one) but she wants to know how it all works too. Can’t she and Di Martino be friends long enough to figure it out?

Di Martino doesn’t really get anything to do in the episode, playing sidekick to various Lokis and surprise returning cast members; though given Kauffman’s dialogue it’s probably for the best. There’s a decent farewell scene for a bunch of people, but it too will probably get invalidated in the finale. Wunmi Mosaku is back for a single scene and gets the absolute worst writing. The show wasted her worse than anyone else.

Even with the bad writing, the complete flop of a silly fight scene (Joel Schumacher did them better), and the narrative cop outs, Journey is probably the most entertaining episode. Because Richard E. Grant’s in it in what appears to be a Loki costume rental from 1987 and he’s wonderful.

There’s also an alligator Loki, which is apparently comics canon accurate but not worth the Google. Cute as hell though.

Also—no spoilers—but Kauffman’s even worse at character motivations than dialogue and his dialogue is tripe. The first act of the episode is everyone acting in absurd ways just to gin up a plot.

But that alligator’s cute as hell. And funny.

And Richard E. Grant.

Logan (2017, James Mangold)

The strangest thing about Logan, at least in terms of the plotting, is how director Mangold is desperate to reference a film classic–one with a plot perfectly suited to what he’s purportedly trying to do with Logan–and he doesn’t follow it through. In any of the neat ways he could. Instead, he goes for obvious and superficial.

Mangold is not Logan’s worst enemy, however. He certainly doesn’t help matters, but the script–which he did cowrite–is the big problem. It’s entirely wrapped up in itself; Logan has a long list of contrivances (mostly with the ground situation but also with plot developments and revelations) and, for whatever reason, the script wants to get into all of them. And all the explanations are lame.

Even still, the film would be able to survive if it weren’t for a nightmare third act when the film tries to get away without a protagonist for a while. It’s called Logan, of course, so one would think it’d always be about Hugh Jackman’s aged mutant killing machine who just wants to chill out and live in hiding. He’s got a big secret to keep–one of the ground situation contrivances the film cops out on dealing with entirely–not just from the audience, but from his sidekicks too. See, in retirement from mutant killing machining, Jackman has become a limo driver. He works long hours and then goes home to Patrick Stewart and Stephen Merchant. Stewart’s sick and Merchant’s the live-in nurse and maid, basically. There’s more to it, but not enough. Because there’s never enough in Logan. Everything is supposed to be implied.

Jackman suffers the worst for all those implications. Mangold’s constantly letting other people take the scene in Logan, whether it’s Stewart (who doesn’t exactly steal the show, but only because the script fails him miserably too) or tough guy villain Boyd Holbrook or even pointless cameoing Eriq La Salle. The script demotes Jackman, Mangold does too.

Logan wants to be a lot of things. It wants to be a family bonding movie–not a family movie about bonding, but a movie about family bonding–it wants to be future commentary (Mangold’s weakly executed future setting is another of Logan’s many painfully obvious problems), it wants to be a tough action movie, it wants to be deep. It really, really, really, really wants to be deep. Mangold loves the symbolism here; sadly he can’t decide on how he wants to convey it, so it’s another thing Logan could’ve done and doesn’t.

Even so, Jackman and Stewart are showing up to do the work. They’re trying to deliver that really, really, really, really deep movie. Dafne Keen–as the young mutant Jackman and Stewart are protecting–is pretty good for most of the movie. When she runs into problems, it’s because the script veers into its crappiest.

It’s a lazy script. It’s a weak and lazy script; Mangold doesn’t have the chops to make it work. He’s never distracted, he’s never interested, he’s always detached, always professional. Logan completely lacks personality. The fight scenes are lame, especially when they should be great. Mangold’s got no rhythm to them. John Mathieson’s capably bland photography doesn’t help, neither does the editing–Michael McCusker and Dirk Westervelt are capably bland. Marco Beltrami’s score is one of his best and it too… bland. François Audouy’s production design–his vision of this mutant-free 2029–isn’t capably bland. It’s just weak.

Jackman’s got enough of a presence to get the film to the finish line. Unfortunately, there’s no one waiting there to finish the movie for him. And Stewart’s fun. Shame the script wasn’t there. Shame Mangold couldn’t bring it together. Logan wants to be anything but mediocre and it ends up being nothing but.