Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/27670
Surprisingly Mature — and Therefore Boring Hall Pass (Rated R) by HEATHER GRIFFITHS Hall Pass (105 minutes) tries to be a sex comedy with a heart of gold, but it ends up as a surprisingly dull look at dull people. The Farrelly Brothers used to be cool and edgy, but now they just seem tired and derivative. There is nothing hard hitting or subversive in this rather lackluster look at what young married couples have to look forward to after a couple of kids — the romance dies, passion becomes habit and everyone resembles Magda from There’s Something About Mary. Seriously. I am not sure if that is a commentary on what people in Rhode Island like to do with their time or what, but Every. Single. Person. is tanned to within an inch of their lives. Is it meant to be part of the humor, or do the Farrelly Brothers think that woman look attractive that way? The Hall Pass of the title is a weeklong free pass to pretend to be single. Rick (Owen Wilson) and Fred (Jason Sudeikis) are married and look at hot women. Pretty crazy. This behavior is so offensive to their wives that it leads Maggie (Jenna Fischer) and Grace (Christina Applegate) to spend all their female bonding time complaining about their husbands. Because when women get together they never have anything to say that doesn’t relate to their hus- bands and/or children. Their Friend? Acquaintance? Mentor? Work-out buddy? Shrink? Dr. Lucy (Joy Behar) convinces the women to offer their husbands hall passes. Maggie and Grace take the kids to the beach and the men take their wallets to every restaurant franchise in a 50 mile radius. Surprisingly, even after cruising Applebees and Chili’s, the guys still go home alone. But not home, to a nearby hotel. Where they are apparently sharing a room, which is going to make it Tasteful Trash Mildred Pierce handles its source material way too politely TV by DEAN ROBBINS HBO turns the James M. Cain novel/Joan Crawford movie Mildred Pierce into a prestige proj- ect: a five-part miniseries starring Kate Winslet as a beleaguered mom-turned-businesswoman in the 1930s (Sunday, 9 p.m.). The story is your basic trashy melo- drama, but director Todd Haynes treats it with mis- guided tastefulness. The pace is slow (I smell Emmys), the palette is muted (I smell Emmys), and Winslet plays her part with excruciating earnestness (boy, do I smell Emmys). In part one, we watch Mildred trudge from divorce to job-hunting, trying to preserve her dignity during the Great Depression. The costume department seems to be having a grand old time, what with all the fussy period outfits, but I don’t think many viewers will. Yes, Mildred Pierce will win its Emmys. The rest of us will have to suffer for it, though. Shark Tank Friday, 8 pm (ABC) This reality series allows would-be entrepreneurs to pitch ideas to several “sharks” — i.e., high-rolling business people — who decide whether they want to invest their own money in the companies. If they like what they hear, they dicker with the entrepreneurs and each other. If they don’t like what they hear, they in- tone the series’ catch phrase: “I’m out.” The season premiere exposes the flaws in the concept. With their cold eyes and flinty personalities, the sharks are the kind of people most of us would avoid like the plague in real life, so why would we want to hang out with them here? Plus, listening to them work through the financial figures — what percentage roy- alty vs. equity, etc. — is about as exciting as doing your taxes. I’m out. 22 UCW MARCH 23-29, 2011 Scream of the Banshee Saturday, 9 pm (SyFy) Anybody who loves bad monster movies, like me, will thrill to the opening scenes in Scream of the Banshee. The TV movie begins amid chanting in 12th century Ireland, natch, where bearded knights capture a bloodthirsty creature in a mystical metal box. Fast forward to the present day. Lauren Holly leads a team of researchers in cataloguing ancient relics — the kind of team whose jokey bonhomie pretty much says “most of us will be dead by the second commercial break.” They find the box, open it, and discover a toothy severed head with the power to scream so loudly that blood drips out of their ears. Holly, following genre conventions, under-reacts to this extraordinarily horrible event: “There’s got to be a plausible explanation.” Well, probably not. But then again, plausibility would spoil all the fun. The Secret Life of the American Teenager Monday, 8 pm (ABC Family) I don’t follow The Secret Life of the American Teenager, but I thought I’d tune in for the season premiere. What, I wondered, is “the secret”? The episode begins with Adrian (Francia Raisa) walking into high school proudly pregnant. Then Amy (Shailene Woodley) tells her boyfriend Ricky (Daren Kagasoff): “I’m ready to have sex with you.” Then Ricky talks to a former girl- friend who says, “You’ve slept with everyone, and that means you’ve slept with ev- eryone everyone’s slept with. And that adds up to hundreds of people.” Then many other kids talk about sex they had or will have with each other. Well, the secret is out: The American Teenager is doing it. A lot. I guess there won’t be much suspense in the season’s second episode. WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM awkward when one of them hooks up. Even with a hall pass in hand, the guys have trouble getting into the appropriate mind-set. They end up eat- ing narcotic brownies and playing golf, which is good for a few poo jokes, but not much else. Once their friends (Stephan Merchant, AKA that guy on the original ver- sion of The Office and J. B. Smooth from Curb Your Enthusiasm, among others) give up on watching married men cheat on their wives like it’s a spectator sport, the two get a little more serious about their project. Because given a free pass, men will cheat on their wives just be- cause they can. Meanwhile, Maggie and Grace are hanging out with softball players and oily tanned men. In turns out that their wonderful nanny has taken the plot conveniences … I mean, children, off-camera the moment they were no longer needed for the plot, which frees the women up for drinking at pool parties with younger men. Back at home, all the existing characters are bor- ing and stupid cardboard cut-outs, so a new character is introduced. Coakley (Richard Jenkins, Hey! It’s That Guy from Six Feet Under!) is apparently an older guy that hooks up with chicks all the time. He is also boring and stupid. The movie goes nowhere fast, and unless you have some kind of Owen Wilson fetish, you might want to skip this one entirely. HEATHER GRIFFITHS, Contributing Writer. COMMENTS? 484-6200 ext. 222 or editor@upandcomingweekly.com