Heading to the movies this weekend? Find out what's worth your time according to the top women film critics at the nation's best publications. Every Friday morning we'll give you the female perspective on what to expect when the curtain rises.
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With such an all-star cast for the sequel to 2000's hit comedy Meet the Parents, some people probably had high expectations, but not most of the female film reviewers out there. In fact, says Salon's Stephanie Zacharek, "the biggest gag... is embedded in its title ‑- a remnant of the old 'sounds like a bad word but isn't' routine." And the New York Daily News's Jami Bernard puts it even more succinctly, saying, "The Focker and the Byrnes families have overstayed their welcome."
But the Los Angeles Times' Carina Chocano did manage to find some fun in Hoffman, whom she calls "the real Jewish mother." And Entertainment Weekly's Lisa Schwartzbaum says "the old-pro twosome of Streisand and Hoffman make such sexy and inviting ethnics (as a certain kind of movie likes to think of a certain kind of Jewish character) that they blithely prevail over the been-there-done-that gags."
Female consensus: The only thing more dysfunctional than the Focker and Byrnes families is the sequel's tired script
Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera
Stars: Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Patrick Wilson, Minnie Driver, Miranda Richardson
Director: Joel Schumacher
Rating: PG-13
If it's subtlety you're looking for, Joel Schumacher ‑- the man responsible for putting nipples on the bat suit in Batman Forever ‑- isn't the guy to deliver it. The Los Angeles Times' Carina Chocano goes all out with her prose, writing, "The screen becomes engorged with color, piles of dust as thick as frosting waft off the seats and chandelier bulbs alight as the familiar remedial melodies that all but soured our coming of age (OK, mine) unleash a bombastic assault on the ear. That's when it becomes unavoidably clear that we're not in Paris, France, at all. We're in Paris, Las Vegas." Salon's Stephanie Zacharek also waxes poetic, saying, "Now it can be told: Although the press has connivingly led us to believe otherwise, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Joel Schumacher are really pseudonyms for two 11-year-old girls from Allentown, Pa., who, disgruntled because their parents wouldn't buy them canopy beds, decided to sit down and write themselves a musical, darn it. And they'd make a movie out of it, too, just you wait and see. The Phantom of the Opera is the long-awaited result." The Philadelphia Inquirer's Carrie Rickey simply goes for description, saying the film "combines fingernails-on-blackboard audio agony with bamboo-under-fingernails physical torture."
But is that such a bad thing? Says the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, "Fans will swoon and weep." USA Today's Claudia Puig also thinks fans will give it the thumbs-up.
Female consensus: Even for an adaptation of a lavish Broadway musical, this fancy flick is way over the top
In limited release:
Kevin Bacon's turn as a pedophile in The Woodsman "absorbs a subject that ordinarily dissolves rationality on contact into an engrossing study of a protagonist who variously inspires pity, clinical interest, fondness and revulsion ‑- sometimes all at once," says the Village Voice's Jessica Winter. Don Cheadle has already nabbed a Golden Globe nomination (not to mention buzz that an Oscar nod will follow) for his role in the fact-based Rwandan genocide drama Hotel Rwanda, which USA Today's Claudia Puig says is "one of the year's most moving and powerful films." Hey, hey, hey, it's the big-screen version of Bill Cosby's Fat Albert, which fans of the TV 'toon will find slim on laughs, according to TV Guide Online's Angel Cohn, who says "basic knowledge of the original series is mandatory, but the more familiar you are, the more glaring this movie's considerable deficiencies will seem."
Seen these films? Tell us what you think.
Find out about last week's releases: The Aviator and Spanglish.
