By CAL & LYNN MASSEY
NEWS-TRIBUNE MOVIE CRITICS
Good try awards at the video store this week ...
THE FIRST HALF -- Your life is a facade, a mask of happiness. The real you is a sedentary lump, closed off from reality and living a virtual fantasy of perfection.
Yes, "The Matrix" was on TV recently, but I'm referring instead to "Surrogates," a fairly noble retread that has its heart in the right place -- the Internet world deadens flesh-and-blood life -- but offers nothing original or profound.
There's something borrowed from a long line of movies offering variations on a conformist, controlled-culture theme, from "The Stepford Wives" to "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."
But where those films warned against a male-dominated society and the communist threat, "Surrogates" worries about the hours you spend connected to a pale little screen.
Here, the screen has evolved into a little helmet of desire that sends a robot out into the world in your stead, while you become little more than a bathrobed agoraphobe tied to wires.
So Bruce Willis now has blond hair and perfect skin, as surrogate detective Greer, and his wife (Rosamund Pike) has the same. Everyone, in fact, has some version of their ideal.
But there are real human beings out there, too, led by The Prophet (Ving Rhames), still living with their imperfections on reservations within the cities. When one of them is linked to the destruction of surrogates with a weapon that also kills the operators, Greer and his partner (Radha Mitchell) must venture into the truth, a scary place.
"Surrogates" sends a message we need to hear, but it isn't a movie you'll remember for long. Maybe the message will stick. Three Hearts.
THE BETTER HALF -- I like the dry wit of actor-comedian Ricky Gervais, who co-wrote and co-directed "The Invention of Lying," so I'd like to say it's one of the best comedies I've seen. But I'd be lying, because actually this black comedy was only so-so for me.
The premise starts off original and funny: Lo and behold, telling a lie is foreign to people. In this world of truth-tellers, where everyone calls it like they see it, the result is a pessimistic place where insults and gloom prevail over hope and happiness.
Mark Bellison (Gervais) is a soon-to-be-fired screenwriter who can't make the plague years interesting enough. He's infatuated with a gorgeous woman named Anna (Jennifer Garner) who tells him every chance she gets that she's out of his league.
Meanwhile, his ailing mother is near death in a nursing home that's called "A Sad Place for Hopeless Old People" in this non-sugar-coated world.
What's a chubby little loser (which is pretty much what everyone calls Mark) to do? How about learn to fib big-time? Being the only one who knows how to stretch the truth soon has Mark becoming a modern-day prophet, which brings on its own set of problems.
My main beef with "The Invention of Lying" is that it contradicts its own parable that there is more to us than meets the eye. Mark only has eyes for Anna because of her outer beauty. Three Hearts.
Until next time, keep veggin' out in front of the DVD ... Married to the Movies.
PHOTO CREDIT: AP Photo/Touchstone Pictures-Disney, Stephen Vaughan
NEWS-TRIBUNE MOVIE CRITICS
Good try awards at the video store this week ...
THE FIRST HALF -- Your life is a facade, a mask of happiness. The real you is a sedentary lump, closed off from reality and living a virtual fantasy of perfection.
Yes, "The Matrix" was on TV recently, but I'm referring instead to "Surrogates," a fairly noble retread that has its heart in the right place -- the Internet world deadens flesh-and-blood life -- but offers nothing original or profound.
There's something borrowed from a long line of movies offering variations on a conformist, controlled-culture theme, from "The Stepford Wives" to "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."
But where those films warned against a male-dominated society and the communist threat, "Surrogates" worries about the hours you spend connected to a pale little screen.
Here, the screen has evolved into a little helmet of desire that sends a robot out into the world in your stead, while you become little more than a bathrobed agoraphobe tied to wires.
So Bruce Willis now has blond hair and perfect skin, as surrogate detective Greer, and his wife (Rosamund Pike) has the same. Everyone, in fact, has some version of their ideal.
But there are real human beings out there, too, led by The Prophet (Ving Rhames), still living with their imperfections on reservations within the cities. When one of them is linked to the destruction of surrogates with a weapon that also kills the operators, Greer and his partner (Radha Mitchell) must venture into the truth, a scary place.
"Surrogates" sends a message we need to hear, but it isn't a movie you'll remember for long. Maybe the message will stick. Three Hearts.
THE BETTER HALF -- I like the dry wit of actor-comedian Ricky Gervais, who co-wrote and co-directed "The Invention of Lying," so I'd like to say it's one of the best comedies I've seen. But I'd be lying, because actually this black comedy was only so-so for me.
The premise starts off original and funny: Lo and behold, telling a lie is foreign to people. In this world of truth-tellers, where everyone calls it like they see it, the result is a pessimistic place where insults and gloom prevail over hope and happiness.
Mark Bellison (Gervais) is a soon-to-be-fired screenwriter who can't make the plague years interesting enough. He's infatuated with a gorgeous woman named Anna (Jennifer Garner) who tells him every chance she gets that she's out of his league.
Meanwhile, his ailing mother is near death in a nursing home that's called "A Sad Place for Hopeless Old People" in this non-sugar-coated world.
What's a chubby little loser (which is pretty much what everyone calls Mark) to do? How about learn to fib big-time? Being the only one who knows how to stretch the truth soon has Mark becoming a modern-day prophet, which brings on its own set of problems.
My main beef with "The Invention of Lying" is that it contradicts its own parable that there is more to us than meets the eye. Mark only has eyes for Anna because of her outer beauty. Three Hearts.
Until next time, keep veggin' out in front of the DVD ... Married to the Movies.
PHOTO CREDIT: AP Photo/Touchstone Pictures-Disney, Stephen Vaughan
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