By Doug Strassler

It’s been said (mostly by me) that the current crop of ensemble romantic comedies, fueled in large part by Love Actually early last decade, are this generation’s version of disaster movies. Except back then, Oscar winners like Charlton Heston, Shelley Winters and Jennifer Jones put in lots of time and were even required to participate in some stunt work (in favorites like Earthquake, The Poseidon Adventure, and The Towering Inferno, respectively).

More recent flicks like He’s Just Not That Into You and Valentine’s Day have simplified the recipe for the stars du jour: they simply have to come on set for a couple of days, act out a sitcom-lite thread, and if the movie opens big, they can all lay claim to a hit!

New Year’s Eve, which arrives on December 9, is the latest entry in this canon. Though it’s not a literal sequel to Valentine’s Day, both movies were written by Katherine Fugate and directed by Garry Marshall, and there are a few cast crossovers, as you’ll in the following trailer.

Yep, that’s Ashton Kutcher, back this time to swap spit with Glee’s Lea Michele. And yep, that’s Jessica Biel, having an NYE baby with Seth Meyers (really?). Yawn. Even Marshall veteran Hector Elizondo is back. We also get Josh Duhamel intoning the beauty of New Year’s Eve—“to celebrate the hope of a new year”—as he tries to track down a lass he fell in love with a year earlier. Sigh. But wait… is that my love Michelle Pfeiffer? Hold back the dawn! Holy welcome return, Batman! That is Pfeiffer, in her Up Close and Personal brunette wig, getting carpe diem advice from Hairspray co-star Zac Efron, in tuff tawkin’ bro mode!

Okay, interest piqued. This preview has a couple of other factors in its favor. It uses Pink’s “Raise Your Glass,” which is always one to get my spirits up. I’m also a bit more inclined to see the movie just because it’s set, natch, in my hometown of New York City (I imagine most of the action takes place in or near Times Square), which may also contribute to the frenzy of this trailer. I won’t know yet if New Year’s Eve itself feels as rushed, but the editing here would feel fast even for someone who grew up on only the last decade of MTV.

There are few specific details regarding individual storylines here, save for Biel with the baby and forlorn dressmaker Sarah Jessica Parker bemoaning the fact that she has no one for whom to dress up. But one can imagine the polots involve a lot of lonely hearts looking to find “the one” before the ball drops at midnight. (Yes, I mean the big bright one in Times Square, kids.)

There’s also one—no, two—rather loud slaps to the face (delivered by Katherine Heigl to Jon Bon Jovi) which grind this trailer to a halt. I mean, ouch! I hope he really deserved this. Not the physical hand to his head, but to have to endure such a jejune cliché. Also, does Bon Jovi still get to make movies? I thought he had to start paying it forward following…Pay It Forward. (Heigl also gets the worst line of the trailer: “There’s going to be more celebrities here than rehab.”  Ick.) I don’t know what exactly their connection is, or how Sofia Vergara’s character knows her, but my curiosity is piqued by the appearance of Hilary Swank as a woman embarking on “the biggest night of her career” with the support of Chris “Ludacris” Bridges.

Marshall has wrangled a couple of other Oscar winners in addition to Swank, namely Halle Berry and Robert De Niro. Sadly, like Vergara, they are shoehorned into the end of the preview, so it’s hard to say who they play or if their roles are more than glorified cameos. (I had read earlier this year that Berry was originally set to play the Heigl role, but the actress’ real-life custody battle forced her to bow out.)

New Year’s Eve isn’t breaking any ground, to be sure. It’s total comfort food, but it’s coming out at a time when we all pay less attention to our diets, right? Yeah, I’ll probably see this movie, and then forget all about it. Just like I do with most of my New Year’s Eve celebrations.

I’m looking forward to 2012, when Fugate and Marshall bring us Arbor Day!, starring Robert Pattinson, Paul Walker, Rooney Mara, and a special guest appearance from Lindsay Lohan.

What do you think? Who out there is planning to make a date with New Year’s Eve?

There are many signs that Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which hits theatres on August 5, will suck. For one thing, it’s being released in August, which is where movies like Final Destination 5: Bitch, You Dead get dumped like soiled underthings For another, star James Franco dissed the movie pretty hard in a recent Playboy interview, suggesting that what began as a project full of character development has devolved into a mindless action film.

However, I’m choosing to ignore these signs, as though they were Cassandra and I were Agamemnon, strolling to my seat in the cineplex without noticing that Clytemnestra seemed awfully insistent that I buy this particular bag of buttery popcorn.

And why am I acting that way? Because the trailer looks so damn cool, that’s why.

First of all, I’m a sucker for apocalypses that begin with small disasters in a lab. I’m chilled by the notion of (a) scientists who are blind to their hubris as they try to improve the world and (b) tiny decisions that unravel society. In both cases, the implication is that we can ruin everything when we’re trying to do good or even just get through the day, and that’s horrible to comprehend. Hence my affection for The Stand and 28 Days Later…, whose diseased-monkey-gone-wild opening scene recalls the intro to this trailer.

On top of that, I love discovering the horror on the edge of a quotidian scene. You know… like, we see two kids playing in a sandbox, and then just behind the trees, we catch a glimpse of an evil clown. Or we see a camera scan across a lovely suburban lawn and just happen to notice The Strangers standing there, machetes in hand. Those moments jab the fear button in my deepest lizard brain because for me, nothing is more awful than discovering I’ve been foolishly at ease. It can be a problem for me, actually, because I can be hyper-mindful of my behavior, especially in situations with people I don’t know very well. Often, I can never quite relax because I don’t want to do anything that might be perceived as a faux pas. I have this irrational belief that the second I stop being vigilant, the second I let down my guard, then KABOOM, I’ll make a fool of myself. (I’m working on that, though. Thanks in advance for your cards.)

My insecurity informs the moment in this trailer when I see a couple sleeping peacefully in their bed, unaware that a very angry gorilla is watching them. NEVER GO TO SLEEP! THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS! AAAAAH!

So… yeah. I want the catharsis this movie can provide. I also want to see how Andy “Gollum” Serkis brings Caesar, the lead monke, to life. Plus, I want to enjoy performances by the stars of my favorite cult TV shows. If one movie unites cast members from Reaper, MI-5, and Deadwood, then it must be pretty good, right? Right?!?!

Well… okay. Not necessarily. But I’m still hopeful. After all, James Franco often comes across like a pompous child who can’t be bothered with anything less than performance art at all times, so maybe he’s just being too hard on a movie that’s not interested in his pomo theories. And maybe the movie is being released in August so it can become the obvious winner of the month.

Is anyone else with me? Am I the only one hoping this movies turns out good?

Judging by the trailer, there are a billion reasons I shouldn’t want to see I Don’t Know How She Does It, the September 16 romcom starring Sarah Jessica Parker as a woman trying to balance her career with her family.

[MORE]

To begin: The opening of this trailer is almost embarrassingly similar to the start of a Sex and the City episode. As Parker lays in bed with her man, we hear her voiceover say, “A recent study showed that women with young children don’t sleep through the night.”

That phrasing! That singsongy voice! That reference to some “study” that can provide a large theme! Obviously, the plot of this week’s episode will be about “male babies.” There will be Miranda’s actual baby, Brady, whose crying keeps her awake; there will be the diseased African baby on TV that makes Charlotte stay awake plotting an adoption; there will be the grown”baby” who keeps Carrie up all night crying about his feelings; and then there will be the guy with the adult baby fetish who wants Samantha to change his messy diaper.

Ahem. There are other signs this movie’s chasing the Carrie Bradshaw dragon. Once again, Parker appears to be playing an impossibly wealthy New Yorker who is nevertheless being peddled as a “regular gal.” Note, for instance, that she can afford to support two children (and apparently a husband) while living in Manhattan, dressing well, and sleeping in an apartment with a staircase in it. Which means she has multiple floors in her house. She’s easily pulling down $400K per year, but you know, she’s just like all those other career gals in America just trying to make it work.

On top of that, there’s the scene where Parker directly addresses the camera about why she’s going to use “having a mammogram” as an excuse for being late to work. Remember how SATC’s first season was all about direct address? And how often it used “lady stuff” as the seed for a joke?

Obviously, there are plenty of other “modern gal” comedies where the characters all talk about blowjobs and tampons and hate on rich bitches while casually ignoring their own wealth. If I Don’t Know How She Does It starred Katherine Heigl or Kate Hudson, it would already seem like a retread of Sex and the City and its descendants. But because this movie stars no less than SJP, the similarities are impossible to ignore. They suggest the film is not only formulaic, but desperate.

So… yeah. That’s why I shouldn’t want to see this movie.

And yet.

That scene where Seth Myers is “amazed” by Parker’s acumen makes me laugh. And the bit at the end, where Parker declares that she loves her job and her family, makes me uncertain how the movie’s going to end. Like, she might not be punished for having a job, right? I’m intrigued by that.

And also… Sarah Jessica Parker. I am intellectually aware that she was never the world’s greatest actress, even before she got crusted over with tics. I realize that she always shows “serious” emotion by over-pronouncing the final words in sentences and moving her eyes back and forth really fast when she’s staring at a costar. However, I still think she’s appealing. I still want her to succeed when she’s on screen. I am powerless before her neurotic charm. Sigh.

Oh, and I just read Carina Chocano’s fantastic article in The New York Times magazine about how “strong female characters” are a cozy lie and that flawed female characters are actually more valuable. Watching this trailer through that lens, I thought, “Hey! She’s totally flawed! Maybe this movie will be awesome!”

I am probably wrong about that. I will probably be disappointed. And yet, despite all the trembling in my heart, I am going to see this movie anyway. Dammit.

You guys, I’ve had great luck with summer films this year. I’ve enjoyed arty flicks like The Tree of Life and Midnight in Paris, and I’ve gotten a kick out of tentpoles like X-Men: First Class and Super 8.

(The latter, by the way, seems destined for my year-end top ten. I cared about the characters, I was delighted by the acting and the emotional twists regarding the alien, and I was totally absorbed in the pace of the storytelling.)

And yet this joy has been tempered by the threat of horrible pictures to come. Before every good movie, I’ve seen trailers for inevitable dreck like Captain America, Transformers 43: The Moon Is My Bitch, Horrible Bosses, and Real Steel, which the good people at Extra Hot Great have helpfully dissected in all its crappiness.

And let me just add: The trailer for Real Steel wants us to get emotionally invested in robots that aren’t sentient. They just sit there lifeless until that irritating kid controls them with a joystick, yet we’re supposed to care about them. There’s an essay to be written here… about how this movie reflects our culture’s emotional and spiritual alienation as our personal experiences are replaced by the proxy experiencesof by machines. As these robots do our fighting for us, so email does our talking for us, etc. But I doubt I can write that essay, because every time I try, I’ll just get distracted by that irritating fucking kid.

Ahem.

But even Real Steel looks better than Zookeeper. It’s clearly going to be the worst movie of the year. Maybe of all time.

Here’s a clip-n-save reference guide to the reasons this movie will blow :

(1 ) Kevin James is in it

I’m not knocking James as a performer. Most members of the ManBoy Comedy Club oversell their jokes with hyper-exaggerated delivery, so that we can practically hear them saying “This is FUNNY! I am WACKY!” in every scene, but James tends to underplay, which makes him much more appealing to watch.

But the man cannot pick a quality film project. His resume includes I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, The Dilemma, Grown Ups, and Hitch. What a cavalcade of horrors.

Zookeeper will  keep the nightmare alive. After all, it’s the story of a zookeeper who learns the animals he tends can talk… and that they want to give him relationship advice. This leads to scenes of James finding his “inner bear”—meaning he growls and rubs on a tree, not that he joins a gay subculture—and having heart-to-hearts with a lioness.

And in case that doesn’t sound cut-rate enough…

(2) The plot hinges on men being spineless idiots and women being superficial bitches

The trailer opens with James proposing to his girlfriend, and she turns him down because he’s a zookeeper instead of, like, a stock broker. Oh, women! All they love is money!

Yet what happens next? Does James sensibly drop this harpy and find a woman who will love him for who he is? No. He pines for her for five years, and when he happens to see her again, he decides to leave the zoo for a corporate job that will impress her. That way, he can get her back. (That’s why the zoo animals talk to him. They don’t want him to leave his job, so they’re going to help him get the girl.)

So… what’s appealing about these people? Why should we root for a guy who’s such a self-hating loser that he will demean himself just to impress a woman who is clearly a shallow, thoughtless shrew? Are we supposed to feel hopeful as he spends 90 minutes trying to impress her? And if they get back together, are we supposed to cheer? And if James finds a better woman—which I’m assuming will happen; she probably works at the zoo, right under his nose—are we supposed to be okay with the hackneyed inevitability of that “twist?”

There’s just no winning with a premise like this. It hinges on making the main characters horrible people.

(3) The animals are sassy

I swear to god, I almost threw up when one of the little monkeys served attitude. And just when I had forced the bile back down my throat, I saw James and a gorilla rapping. To a Flo Rida song. That is four years old.

It’s bad enough when films try to “surprise” us with rapping grannies and sassy kids. (Ha ha. They’re upending our expectations of what kids and grannies are like. Ha.) But it’s worse when those tropes are layered onto talking animals, because talking animals are also a lazy stunt. By combining them, this film suggests that it hates us, that it can’t be bothered to surprise us with original humor because it doesn’t respect us enough to try.

(4) TGI Friday’s is apparently a major element of the story

The rapping gorilla is obsessed with TGI Friday’s—because I guess he can see one from his station in the zoo?—and that Flo Rida scene ends with James driving the beast into a TGI Friday’s parking lot. Granted, there’s something funny about a captive animal jonesing for a chain restaurant instead of, say, his freedom, but there’s a “paid advertisement” stench coming off these references that’s impossible to ignore.

(5) Ken Jeong is in the cast

And he’s playing someone called “Venom.”

Like a wary acolyte, I approached the trailer for Super 8 with trepidation. Yes, Steven Spielberg (the executive producer) and J.J. Abrams (the writer-director) have served very good alien over the years, but could they really convince me they’d done something new? Didn’t the plot of this film—a group of kids are shooting a monster movie when they see an actual monster/alien/freak crash on a railroad track–sound like a fusion of things they’d done before? Like Cloverfield mixed with E.T. and maybe a pinch of War of the Worlds?

But oh, I was a fool. Even though I do recognize many of the plot elements here—and there are also touches of Stand By Me and Breaking Away and every other “gang of young boys” movie—I don’t care. I am in. If nothing else, Spielberg and Abrams both know how to tell sci-fi/fantasy stories that brim with human feeling, and this movie appears to have plenty of characters worth caring about. Like, tell me more about this guy who actually saw the creature. Why is he so sad?

Plus, the trailer’s rocking an aw-shucks-I’m-just-a-moseyin’ energy, which seems like an interesting way to approach an alien apocalypse story.

Oh… and Noah Emmerich’s in it! He’s one of my favorite Hey! It’s That Guy! actors, what with his unusual mix of soulful regret and I-might-touch-you creepiness. No matter which part her plays, be it Marlon in The Truman Show or cloistered CDC survivor Dr. Jenner in The Walking Dead, he always seems like he’s about to cry or fuck you up. Or maybe both. And I find that fascinating.

What do you think? Are you down for Super 8? Or would you rather Super wait? HA!

Did you read Tad Friend’s recent New Yorker article on Anna Faris? It chronicles her efforts to push beyond the limited opportunities offered to women in Hollywood comedies, but more than that, it gets blunt, damning quotes from producers, writers, directors, and actors about why those opportunities are so limited to begin with.  When I finished it, I was infuriated, because I happen to prefer smart movies about women to dumb movies about boys. In a pinch, I’ll even take a dumb movie about women over the latter because I’m alienated by depictions of heterosexual boy-men who are terrified of women and gay guys and who only relate to each other like stunted children.

More specifically: I’m alienated by how much fucking attention that type of man gets in the movies. One or two I Love You Mans could be awesome, but fifty is nauseating, particularly for someone who has never had a problem accessing his feelings, has never thought women were scary, and has never thought guys were “adorable” when they forgot to act like grown ups.

Seeing that type of character at the expense of all others—and seeing the vapid women and gay men who are so often propped up around those characters—is exhausting. Can’t we leaven this bread with some other points of view?

Well… we can try. Or Anna Faris can. Her upcoming comedy What’s Your Number? is trying to put a feminine spin on the comedy of male sexual panic, just as May’s Bridesmaids, starring Kristen Wiig, is trying to be a Hangover for ladies.

The trailer for What’s Your Number just dropped today (thanks to My New Plaid Pants for pointing it out), and I’ve got to say… it looks pretty funny. I’m guessing Bridesmaids is going to be more my speed—that trailer really makes me laugh—but I’m willing to give What’s Your Number? a chance. I’ve only seen Farris in Brokeback Mountain and Lost in Translation, and I know some people really hate her breakthrough film The House Bunny, but the ethos of this movie, about a woman trying to come to terms with all the losers she’s slept with, seems geared to produce laughs that also provoke thoughtfulness. If nothing else, the women in the movie will probably be complex and interesting, which means I’ll probably relate to them.

It doesn’t hurt that there are about 40 hot guys in the movie (Joel McHale! Chris Evans! Zachary Quinto!) and that Farris nails funny lines like that one about the scientist.

But ultimately, I’m interested in seeing this movie because I feel like it needs to exist. I want to see more films that support the feminine point of view.Does that make me weirdly political, and is that maybe not the greatest mindset while watching a raunchy comedy? Perhaps. But I’ll be politically laughing will all my sisters, by god!

p.s. — I’d also love to see smart comedies about gay men, since I could relate to those even more than I could relate to What’s Your Number? But… um… I’m not sure those comedies exist. Gay movies are usually terrible. Though I’m still eager to see I Love You Philip Morris, which may be an exception, and I will always have a soft spot for the sweet romance in Big Eden.

The trailer for Fast Five (or as I like to call it, We’re Still Going This Fast? I’m Furious!) is doing me a solid: It’s pandering so shamelessly to its target audience that it’s not even pretending there’s anything in the movie for me. Maybe that’s what happens when you reach the fifth film in a franchise. You know who your people are, and you know there’s no point in catering to anyone else.

At any rate, here are the subtle clues I’m picking up from the trailer:

(1) Fast Five will not be featured on the cover of Ms. magazine

Yes, there are women in the trailer, but they never actually speak. Not even a syllable. Which is good, I guess, if you think speech is just a pesky distraction from boobs. However, one woman does make out with a guy while he’s driving his car, and another expertly handles a gearshift like it’s, um, a stiff piece of action. Oh, and there quite a few shots of bikini-clad asses.

The misogyny is just so blatant and generic that I suspect it was created as part of an elaborate psych experiment.

(2) Women aren’t the movie’s only fantasy objects

Do you think the men whistling at all the booty on screen will realize the movie is also pandering to their latent homoerotic desire? Because seriously: The Rock? No one looks like that without the help of steroids and a pump-action bicep implant. His freakishly muscular form is just as objectified as a stripper’s body, and it’s just as intended to make straight men look, gape, and crave. Maybe they’re supposed to want the women and want to be The Rock, but that’s a split hair. Lust is still paramount to the looking.

Meanwhile, Vin Diesel and Paul Walker are apparently lovers. The longing looks, the tank tops, the romantic cliff dive at the end. That’s romance, y’all.

(3) Eugene O’Neill Wasn’t Available for a Rewrite

A trailer is ostensibly supposed to deliver a film’s best moments, including its best laugh lines. Here are some of this trailer’s Cole Porter-worthy bon mots :

“This just went from Mission: Impossible to Mission Freakin’ Insanity.”

“Chances are we’re going to end up behind bars or buried in a ditch somewhere. But not today.”

“This is crazy!”
“This is a hundred million dollars.”
[pause]
“I’m down.”

I mean, damn. Was Yakov Smirnov not available to punch this shit up?

It’s possible, of course, that all the female characters have been given sparkling dialogue, and the powers that be decided to edit it out of the trailer. That way, we can laugh with mirth and surprise at their wit… when they stop fellating criminals and start cheekily debating politics.

(4) Andy Kaufman Coached The Actors

That’s got to be what it is, right? Kaufman rose from his grave and gave everyone lessons on being intentionally terrible. Especially Vin Diesel. At 1:54, when he says, “But not todaaaay,” and he sounds like a grumpy, ESL frog. It’s kind of mesmerizing… like watching a stroke victim try to regain speech.

I am a simple man. In the spring, all I need from a movie is some ass-kicking, some crazy wigs, and a wolf statue that looks like it was commissioned by Satan’s Putt-Putt Golf Course.

It looks like Hanna will provide all that and more. That surprises me, since the poster I’ve been seeing (embedded above) makes it look like Braveheart for Girls, which turns me right off. Fortunately, Roommate Joe suggested I watch the trailer, which is serving this…

We start with the words  “Once Upon a Time…” on the screen, which prepare us for some kind of fairy tale, and the spooky Chemical Brothers music tells us it will be a dark and modern fairy tale at that. But as anyone who suffered through last month’s Red Riding Hood could tell you, that’s not necessarily a good thing.

Then “Once Upon a Time” is followed by the phrase “There Was A Very Special Girl,” which floats in a forest. And then? The forest seems to swallow the words. They slide behind a tree limb and never come back. That’s cool, dammit! At the very least, it’s unexpected. And if you look closely, you can see the blurry shape of a person behind the disappearing text. Could this be our very special girl? Why… yes. Because there she is in the next scene, holding a gun.

Hanna (Saiorse Ronan) is observing the woods when her father (Eric Bana) sneaks up behind her and says he could have killed her, right then and there. It’s a grippingly silent encounter…  until Ronan starts screaming like a crazy person and beating the shit out of her dad. Um…. what? Suddenly, the trailer is unleashing raw, animal energy.

After that, we get key plot points about how the movie is actually set in the present and Hanna is connected to a CIA operation fronted by Cate Blanchett. There’s a promise of secrets and danger and fight scenes.

Then weget to 2:17, where Cate Blanchett, wearing a wig that suggests Whitewater-era Hilary Clinton, drawls in a Southern accent that “sometimes children are bad people, too.”

And here’s the thing: In the context of this trailer, that’s a really striking line. Because clearly, this is neither The Bad Seed or The Good Son, where the leading kid is the devil incarnate, nor Curly Sue, where the adorable child is pursued by mean old grown-ups. Like Katniss in The Hunger Games or Natalie Portman in The Professional, Hanna seems like a child without childishness… an intense and ambiguous character who might actually be a bad person. She probably isn’t—this is a Hollywood movie, after all—but the fact that it even seems possible is intriguing.

And what does this possibility mean in a fairy tale? We get a hint at 2:18, when Cate Blanchett is walking out of the mouth of a giant wolf’s head. In the woods. Overlooking a creek. What the hell is that thing? It implies that the film will have a feverish, dreamlike quality, which suits a fairy tale just fine.

Oh, and finally, the last bit of the trailer features happy calliope music. You know… just to fuck with us one more time before it walks out the door.

All those elements, the ferocity and the surreal wolves and the music and the red wig… they convince me that I must see this movie. Well played, trailer. Well played.

Do you know who sucks? College graduates. And people who speak French. Do you know who’s really lonely and probably going to drink too much? That educated woman over there. Do you know has no idea how to be a decent person because she’s obviously too wealthy and well-dressed to understand religion and tradition? Any character played by Angela Bassett.

But do you know who’s amazing? Anyone who is the opposite of those people. They’re salt-of-the-earth, you see, and by sprinkling their simple wisdom like so many jimmies on a cupcake, they’re going redeem those pole-up-the-ass successful types.

I’ve known these things for years, of course, because I’ve been fortunate enough to live in a culture where the dominant narratives focus on succeeding, but not succeeding too much; on working hard but not working too hard; on moving up to a deluxe apartment in the sky, but feeling really guilty about it. I’ve been inundated with movies, plays, books, and television shows that remind me that once I actually achieve the purported American dream of becoming independently successful and educated, I will lose touch with what makes me a good person. To counteract that, I’d better find “primitive” angel—you know, someone who works in a mine, or is four years old, or is from a foreign country that isn’t in Europe. That angel will teach me so much! And I won’t have to, like, give my money away, and my angel won’t get sophisticated on me like some above-his-raising jerk, but everyone will feel so damned good that we’ll  eat together at a shitty hot dog stand and feel like royalty.

I love these stories, because they spare me from icky thoughts about how economic status and educational history don’t actually dictate a person’s character. I mean… can you imagine? What if poor people could be assholes, or successful businesswomen also had the capacity for joy? Chaos! That’s why I hated David Lindsay-Abaire’s new Broadway play Good People, in which Frances McDormand plays a desperately poor woman from south Boston who tries to manipulate a kid from the neighborhood who went and got rich. In that play, everyone had moments of grace and moments of treachery… wisdom came from all quarters, and so did douchebaggery. It was so complex and layered, and it made me mad!

Thank God there are two movies coming out this spring that promise to make things authentically simple again. At least, that’s the promise their trailers make, and the movies had better live up to the trailers, by God!

(1) Larry Crowne (in theaters July 1)

Bless that Tom Hanks! First, he starred in Forrest Gump, which makes one of the clearest statements in movie history about stupidity’s importance to spiritual worth. And now he’s rocking the title role in Larry Crowne, about a man who is forced by “the system” to go to college, and whose charming folksiness melts the bitter heart of a college professor played by Julia Roberts.

I realize this movie might become a thoughtful and funny rumination on the very real anxiety that many Americans are facing as they’re told they no longer have enough training to merit a job. But happily, the trailer ends with scene after scene of Hanks making everyone love him. Looks like we’re dodging that bullet of complexity!

(2) Jumping the Broom (in theaters May 6)

In this movie, an “upscale” gal named Sabrina (Paula Patton) gets engaged to a “down home” guy named Jason (Laz Alonso). And boy, those upscale people cannot keep it real! They don’t carry Bibles around, and they have white people working for them! As the trailer makes clear, a black family with white employees is funny and weird and maybe a little suspect. Ha! Thank God Jason’s mother is there to antagonize everyone with her clear-eyed vision of what constitutes proper behavior.

And sure, sure… the trailer suggests that eventually, the Upscales and the Downhomes will find common ground, and it even implies that  the Downhomes don’t know everything. I’m dubious about that, but whatever: The primary message being sold is that Success Kills Your Heart and Soul. Word!

You guys, I wasn’t even planning to write a Trailer Scaler today. I was planning to write about the unexpected correlation between The Hunger Games and The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. This morning, you see, Roommate Joe alerted me that For Colored Girls has released a trailer. And if you know me at all, then you know that I have to stop the presses to make room for it.

The Movie: For Colored Girls (Opening November 5)

The Buzz: Tyler Perry has assembled three billion exceptional actresses for his film adaptation of Notzake Shange’s influential 1975 play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow is Enuf. If it’s good, then we should start lining up the Oscar nominations and inevitable Oprah interviews now. If it’s bad… well, Oprah will probably interview the cast anyway, but the rest of the world will politely look the other way out of respect for the noble effort.

The Trailer:

The Review:

If you have ever owned an anthology of drama, then you know Shange’s play. It is almost always included in the section on “modern American theatre” and for better of worse, it tends to be lumped with A Raisin in the Sun, Fences, and M. Butterfly as an example of the minority voice in our country’s dramatic canon.

Because of this constant anthologizing, it can be easy to forget that For Colored Girls… is not just a convenient example. It is also a structurally inventive, politically aggressive, and emotionally expansive work of art that suggests both a specific revolutionary moment in American history and an ongoing conversation about women and minorities in our country.

In case you don’t have a Harcourt Brace Anthology of Drama on your bookshelf, let me explain what I mean. Shange’s play is more like a collection of poems. They are delivered by a group of seven nameless women who are identified only by the color of their clothes (“Lady in Blue,” “Lady in Yellow,” etc.) Each woman’s poem/monologue creates a specific, personal manifestation of a larger racial and/or feminist issue—abortion, domestic violence—and in the final scene, the women participate in a ritual invocation.

I’ve never seen the play performed, but having read it and seen videos of performances, it strikes me as a thoughtful and highly theatrical piece of work that is rooted in the issues of the 1970s. Given a good production, I can absolutely see how it could be satisfying (and perhaps even moving.) 

However, the play balances on the knife edge between “profound” and “pretentious.” All those Evocations of the Spirit running around and intoning poems… if it’s not handled delicately, it could make you want to scratch your eyes out.

So given all this, I’m wondering… is Tyler Perry the best writer-director for this project?

For one thing, his work is often criticized for its oversimplified and weirdly judgmental attacks on black women who try to get above their raising. His movie The Family That Preys even suggests that a shrill wife deserves to be slapped, and it plays her assault as a comeuppance the audience should cheer. Can the man who makes that movie be trusted with Shange’s proudly feminist piece?

And even if he can handle the politics, canPerry handle the tone?As I said, Shange’s writing veers toward pretension, but it’s also filled with sensitivity and wit. A director who highlights the latter can probably fend off the former, but Tyler Perry has hardly made his fortune by being subtle. Can the man who created Madea give nuance to Shange’s women, or will he flatten them out it his quest to make a Serious Statement? Will he create a film that contains laughter or light,or will he snuff  those features so he can force-feed us Art and Lessons?

Based on this trailer, I’m worried that he’s teaching us lessons. Everything from the music to the hushed performances insist this shit is serious, y’all, and we’d better pay attention. Granted, the images are beautiful—including the interesting solo shots of the cast members—but a boring slog is a boring slog, no matter how pretty it is.

Still… I have hope. I mean, the cast is kind of amazing. Right here in the preview, we see Phylicia Rashad, Loretta Divine, Kimberly Elise, Thandie Newton, and Whoopi Goldberg, who if you’ll remember actually is a talented actress when she has a mind to be. Then there’s Macy Gray, which… okay. She was good in Training Day.

Oh, and then there’s Janet Jackson, who is apparently Tyler Perry’s muse. I’m less sold on that one, but Phylicia Rashad alone buys you a lot of wiggle room.

On top of the cast, we also have Shange’s writing. It sounds like Perry’s script has preserved her rich language, which implies her powerful stories have survived, too.

These things will get me in the theatre, even though my expectations will be tempered.