Dan Ubilla

Going Down

“Really?  You haven’t seen it yet?”  I heard these words uttered early last week, mere days after The Hangover came out.  How had a movie ripped through the 18-34 demographic so quickly and earnestly?  For an age group that responds best to star power or word-of-mouth when it comes to its comedies, an ensemble cast starring, frankly, nobody managed to beat the Will Ferrell vehicle, Land of the Lost, $43.3 to $19.5 million.  The answer isn’t in the marketing, which was neither ubiquitous nor varied by any considerable degree.  yet the very reason for the film’s initial success is the same that will stifle the movie’s longevity.  The Hangover attracts two separate sects of young moviegoers, and neither faction loved the movie for reasons that will hold their attention in six months time.

A cameo by a young Tyson just seems fresher

At it’s core, The Hangover was a family movie for friends.  The economic success of family films are generally guaranteed because, well, kids can’t go to the movies alone.  An animated movie that culls one member of a family of four, sells tickets to all four members.  Likewise, The Hangover was meant for a group of friends.  Chances are if one of your friends wanted to see the movie, all of your friends got together.  It became a miniature event of sorts.  And just like animated movies are marketed specifically to kids, The Hangover was marketed point blank at your friends that laugh at lowest common denominator humor.  If you’re questioning this, the smoking gun was Mike Tyson, and you’re precisely the friends that convinced the group to head to the theatre.  This is not a bad thing.  In fact, it’s a great thing.  You brought people together.  This will not happen with the DVD release.

Before I go any further, I must confess.  I loved the movie.  The humor is blatant and ridiculous; the type of story that is exaggerated with each telling.  The characters weren’t as empathetic as has come to be expected with the influx of Apatow-produced comedies of the past few years, and the change was surprisingly refreshing.  It all fit the testosterone-fueled cinematic adventure expected out of a movie called The Hangover.  Kudos to Todd Phillips.

As much as I enjoyed the movie, it will always look better in retrospect.  In the exact way that the movie built its success on group viewing, it will never find its success on any medium that won’t create a memory.  Just like nobody likes drinking alone, the movie simply won’t work without a group atmosphere.  Of course, the movie’s greatest reason for long-term failure is that, like a good night out, it simply won’t be quite as good when you go back to remember it.

The reasons are two-fold.  The most memorable comedies, in particular of the past decade, have relied on quotability.  Memorable quotes infuse a movie into our culture, give it life and personality even when the movie’s not even playing.  The Hangover had none.  People walked out of Old School saying, “I’ll do one”; they left Anchorman saying, “I’m kind of a big deal.”  Audiences left The Hangover saying, “Wasn’t that one part funny?”  Yes, yes it past-tense-was funny.

No, Matthew, I don't know who I want to punch more

Speaking of Old School and Anchorman, the movies of the Frat Pack sound like a passage from the Bible.  Old School begat Anchorman and Wedding Crashers.  Anchorman begat Talladega Nights and The Forty-Year Old Virgin.  Virgin begat Knocked Up, ad nauseum.  There is no heirarchy, no mentorship in the cast of The Hangover.  Sure, Todd Phillips directed both The Hangover and Old School.  Yes, Zach Galifianakis steals the spotlight, and he’s nothing more than a poor man’s Will Ferrell.  Ed Helms simply doesn’t have the star power his predecessor, Steve Carrell, has, and if Bradley Cooper is destined for any career in films, it’s more Matthew McConaughey than Vince Vaughn.  The Hangover is Cooper’s own Dazed and Confused, the best movie he’ll put out, but Cooper can’t even pull it off with the sort of iconic line that McConaughey pulled off.

In a few years, what seemed like a highly memorable movie will fade from our memory like all those crazy nights that seemed so important the next day.  “Remember that one time?”  “Oh yeah!”  In the end, there’s nothing wrong with that.  A string of nights, or movies like this, and a cognizant memory is formed, friendships created and strengthened.  In the end, like any hangover, it will only fade with time.

The following is spoiler intense for both the new Star Trek movie and the season finale of LOST. Consider yourself warned.

A readers’ appreciation for literature has always been rooted in their relation for the characters involved. For some, this means a detachment from their personal lives. Middle-aged housewives might prefer a romance novel about twenty-somethings; a young boy’s favorite story could be about pirates. Others enjoy stories because they see themselves as the leading men and women.

The most prevalent complaint in Hollywood in recent years has been of the lack of originality in new content. Sequels and remakes litter television and movie theatres while viewers wonder slightly less rhetorically with each passing summer: has every story been told? Hope in the infinity of creativity has ekpt me from giving up, and after endless drivel has been presented for mine and everyone’s consumption, there may be a master storyteller ready to reflect life and mimic art in an amazingly innovative and entertaining way. JJ Abrams wants us to rethink the facet of life we understand the least to begin with: time.
Time has been at the center of countless, fantastic works, but never has it presented and turned so many themes on their heads as it has in Abrams’ LOST and Star Trek.

In LOST, the end of Season 5 asks us if the failure is always worth the lesson. Jack risks everything at the chance to erase the past three years (and five seasons). Erasing the misery would regress the growth. This is something Lock understands as he tells Sawyer earlier this season that opening the hatch was painful, but ultimately made him the strong, confident leader he became. The dichotomy of pleasure and pain is often debated, but Jack is given the ultimate choice in trading in his pain. What will he receive? The entire concept is reminiscent of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”, where a Utopian society is created through use of a drug that numbs all feeling and emotion making its citizens autonomous creatures. The LOST season ends in a cliffhanger for the ages, and we’ll have to wait until 2010 to discover what themes Abrams wishes to present. In the meanwhile, we’re lucky to be stuck in a limbo, to decide for ourselves what we’d like to see. I’m personally pulling for the plane to crash regardless, and the season to open with Jack and company approaching the foot of the statue.

Star Trek, a holy tenet of the science fiction zeitgeist, was built up to be another retread, another reboot a la “Casino Royale” and “Batman Begins”. Instead, JJ Abrams surprised everyone by using time travel to create a thinkpiece on missed chances, redemption, and, of course, destiny. LOST studies these themes to varying degrees of depth, with destiny as the starring theme, but while the characters of LOST question changing their present from the past, Star Trek takes a different angle. In the movie, Jimmy Kirk’s destiny is taken off-course when the past is changed and his father is killed in an act of heroism. Despite this detour in his life, enough events transpire to course-correct, another popular topic in the fifth season of LOST, and Kirk eventually takes the captain’s chair. Redemption is usually seen in action movies when the superhero considers taking off the mask and retiring, or the cop begins to question if he’s making a sincere difference. With time travel pushing the plot along, these rules have changed. In his experiences, Kirk has lost nothing, so how do you redeem yourself from actions that have never happened? Another hypothetical courtesy of time twisting.

Time travel as a motif and plot device has a strength greater than most. Even if this new trend will leak out of the Bad Robot camp, it’s hard to say whether the general public will accept it. If it’s able to make the jump from niche towards genre, there will be some great stories to tell.