Dark Tower falls apart

Idris Elba in The Dark Tower. Image courtesy Columbia Pictures.

The Dark Tower teases with hints of how great it could, or rather should, be. The Stephen King adaptation has several fascinating magical bits and a typically great, understated lead performance by Idris Elba as weary gunslinger Roland Deschain that it could very well serve as the start of a great fantasy series on par with the Lord of the Ring. But it doesn't come particularly close to reaching those heights, stuck with just those glimmers of quality in an otherwise dire screenplay that lifts elements from, of all movies, Super Mario Bros. courtesy a brain trust led by the inconsistent Akiva Goldsman. What viewers get is a mishmash of concepts and tones, with a story carried by the wrong character and few positives from an abbreviated movie.

At the heart of Dark Tower is a simple good versus evil story between the troubled, tired fighter Deschain and giddy, evil wizard Walter (a wicked hammy Matthew McConaughey). Enough parallels exist to make the two mirror images of the other, the gunslinger's shooting prowess canceling out the sorcerer's epic magic abilities, who seeks some sense of revenge by taunting poor Deschain. Traces of that concept carry the film to as close to watchable as it can get, along with the hints about Walter's true powers and the skosh of mythology about the eponymous tower, the gunslinger legend, and the creatures that serve Walter's orders to destroy the sole boundary keeping the dark from cascading into the light.

Somehow most of that is sidelined to focus on some preteen kid (Tom Taylor) discover his psychic powers, or in King’s terms shine. With so many great options to choose from involving a brilliant gunfighter and a wizard, Goldsman and crew opted to center The Dark Tower on the adolescent coming of age story in which his powers (poorly) represent some sort of awakening. They effectively made an escort mission where Deschain grumpily but still lovingly protects the kid from the evils around him. That the movie doesn't leave enough time for their relationship to grow (let alone enough time to believe how quickly the boy's powers increase) exacerbates the problem. It's not the worst route this movie could have veered toward with its narrative; it just ranks pretty low on the list for what is or is not interesting with a story about a mystical gun fighter.

It's just frustrating watching Dark Tower and waiting for director Nikolaj Arcel and multitude of screenwriters to build some sort of a universe. There are a lot of little elements that crop up hinting at what could have been, some cool little bits of magic performed by an almost unstoppable being, and the general concept of Deschain's gunslinger legacy. What this movie needs more than anything is a well-plotted mythology to explain the movie's machinations and provide viewers some context as to what's happening. The battle between Elba's Deschain and an appropriately enthused McConaughey would make for a remarkable movie, with Elba's quiet intensity contrasting greatly with McConaughey's slightly menacing charisma. Dark Tower offers little aside from formulaic snippets of exposition and a ton of logical leaps the viewer has to make to fill in the gaps otherwise. Little explanation is offered for the existence of the movie's multiple worlds, the eponymous tower, or even the war between the gunslingers and McConaughey's dark wizard Walter. Viewership of what sounds like on paper to be an incredible experience is instead abbreviated to post-battle flashbacks (proper battle sequences are a little too pricy for this movie) and some mediocre world jumping that skimp on the special effects. Some of that would get built upon through the addition of some hypothetical sequels, but Dark Tower leaves viewers wanting far more from the movie they've watched.

Then again, building a world as elaborate as the one required for Dark Tower is difficult for a movie that lasts all of 95 minutes (end credits included). Ninety-five minutes is not long enough to establish a universe appropriate for this movie. Goldsman and company attempt to fill in the gaps with exposition and a whole lot of assumptions, leading to the aforementioned mythological holes and some rather notable plot holes to boot. Cutting corners has its consequences, in this case a less than engaging film and what is probably an early end to what should have been a great franchise.

Review: One and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 95 minutes

Genre: Fantasy

Ask Away

Target audience: People who have read the book series and folks down to watch Idris Elba be awesome.

Take the whole family?: The content is too dark for young kids. Keep it at age 10 and up.

Theater or Netflix?: Netflix if at all.

Should this franchise continue?: Ideally this would be rebooted immediately, with only Elba carried over to whatever comes next. It's easy to appreciate what this movie could have been even without reading the books, so perhaps a new round of talent can maximize this movie's potential.

Watch this instead?: Stephen King adaptations are pretty hit or miss. The Shining, The Dead Zone, The Shawshank Redemption, Carrie and Stand By Me are all pretty great, due in part to the respective directors taking liberties with the material. Also worth a read is The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon

Sing consistently off-key

Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) in Sing. Image courtesy Universal Pictures.

Sing opens on a particularly illogical and nonsensical note and never rights its course, opting to run through more 108 minutes of crass jokes, flatulence jokes and an overabundance of Seth MacFarlane to end with something miles away from heartfelt. Sing isn't much of a film, yet it somehow doesn't cross into abhorrent or awful either; it's just annoyingly bad, too lazy and uninspired to do much more than exist and crank out pop music covered by famous actors and aspiring singers.

None of this is really all that surprising. The studio responsible for this, Illumination, is known for producing this type of fair. It has one solid film in Despicable Me and a whole mess of whatevers, including this summer's mediocre Secret Life of Pets. It's an uninteresting studio designed to make lower-budget animated films like Sing and earn a hefty profit in the process, rarely caring for artistic merit, good storytelling or sophisticated jokes. The studio never aspires to be Pixar, Disney, Studio Ghibli or even DreamWorks, although its films cost the same amount at the cinema as the films by the other four. Not every film is going to be Toy Story 3, Moana, My Neighbor Totoro, or Chicken Run, but you'd hope a studio would chuck in a modicum of effort into producing films. Illumination, however, doesn't seem too interested in actually doing something with its animation quality, plot or characters, hitting the proverbial notes as needed to create an overstuffed pile of meh. In a year with a pair of legitimately great animated films and a few OK ones, Sing is just there, waiting for the money to roll in from viewers with little else to do on a December afternoon.  

Usually a film like Sing has a clever idea or some promise that isn't fulfilled, a redeeming quality just under the surface to be positive about. That is very much not the case. The premise, about a collection of anthropomorphic regular folks (voiced by Scarlett Johansson as a porcupine, Reese Witherspoon as a pig, Tori Kelly as an elephant, Taron Egerton as a gorilla, Nick Kroll as another pig and the aforementioned MacFarlene as a mouse) competing in a talent competition run by Matthew McConaughey as a koala with bad business sense, isn't innovative or interesting on its own. Not a fatal flaw if the writers find something interesting to say about it, which they do not. Excluding a bizarre subplot involving MacFarlane's awful mouse wannabe lounge singer, the film never veers off the boring characters take their chance at stardom, doubt themselves, then rise up again to put on a whopper of a performance because that would require some thought and nuance, concepts this film prefers to avoid.

Well, technically the film does make a viewer think about the inane insanity of the film universe. Much of the soundtrack consists of covers of songs like Shake It Off, Call Me Maybe, My Way, Hallelujah, and Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing. An underlying issue though is how these animals are singing these songs; the original artists are never mentioned in animal form, yet they are part of the fabric of the film universe. Is this some sort of universe in which animals have copies of popular music produced by humans? Were the humans conquered recently a la Planet of the Apes, their music, clothes and cars the only remnants of the pre-animal conquered world? Are there animal versions of Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Stevie Wonder and Leonard Cohen (RIP) floating around this animal universe? Really, is there a reason to have animal characters instead of humans? The answer to the last point is a resounding no, besides maybe a cuteness factor that is unrelated to the plot, script or good storytelling techniques.

The closest Sing gets to finding some emotional resonance is at the end, amid the grand performance the animals had worked so hard to perfect despite all the bland and easily avoidable obstacles in their way. After Kelly's elephant rocks out to an uninspired cover of a great Stevie Wonder song, a slight chill ran through my body and I thought maybe this film has found a place in my heart. Then I remembered I had walked through a heavy rain in November to get to this screening and my clothes were still soaked. I continued to shiver, my only comfort being that I won't have to watch Sing again any time soon.

Review: One and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG

Run time: 108 minutes

Genre: Animated
 

Ask Away

Target audience: Families who can't get tickets to Rogue One.

Take the whole family?: The film gets lazy with a couple of fart jokes, but on the whole there isn't anything objectionable about the content besides the quality.

Theater or Netflix?: Wait for home if you must watch it.

What's the deal with Seth MacFarlene?: He is the one character who bugs me more than anything else in this film. While the other characters are at least trying to do something with their lives, MacFarlene's mouse is awful, never really interested in redeeming himself. That his crappy character also offers MacFarlene to indulge in his fantasies of being Sinatra (when he's at best a C- Bublé)  is all the more frustrating.

Watch this instead?: There's still an animated musical in theaters that is leagues better than this thing. It’s called Moana.