Monday, August 1, 2011 The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com Crazy mediocre love COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL "Can't touch this." Broncos clash with aliens By ANKUR SOHONI Daily Arts Writer The marketers at Universal seemed to know exactly where to hit the target audience for "Cow- boys & Aliens" - simplistic but impressive posters, action- COA" packed and flashy trailers. But most & AhiS important of all AtQuality 16 was a small title and Rave card advertising that this film was Universal from the director of "Iron Man." Enough has been mentioned about said director Jon Favreau. But his style - or at least the style Universal banked on getting peo- ple to the multiplex - was humor- twinged action with a proficient hand in special effects and an abil- ity to handle powerhouse actors like Robert Downey Jr. The director plays "Cowboys & Aliens" with a somewhat different hand - one that not many expect- ed and few prefer. He plays it straight and serious, as if the film's jumbled script could somehow rest on its own storytelling laurels. The simplicity of Universal's posters comes full circle into a bland and poorly planned action-adventure that feels a lot smaller than it's meant to. The narrative is messy. We find Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig, "Defiance") alone in the 19th-cen- tury desert, amnesic and affixed with a strange, thick metal bracelet on his wrist. He finds his wayto the town of Absolution, which is ruled by moneyman Woodrow Dolar- hyde (Harrison Ford, "Morning Glory") and tormented by his little shithead of a kid Percy (Paul Dano, "There Will Be Blood"). The other characters we encounter include a kindly priest (Clancy Brown), a helpless saloon owner (Sam Rock- well, "Conviction"), a stoic sheriff (Keith Carradine, "Peacock") and a mysterious beauty (Olivia Wilde, "TRON: Legacy"). Lonergan turns out to be a want- ed man with a big bounty on his head. Not remembering his crimes, he discovers his story's exposition just as slowly as it's delivered to us. He gets locked up, ponders his troubled past and wonders what to do next. And then aliens attack. There's not much need to say anything more, and before see- ing the film, most people probably didn't know anything beyond the genre-blending concept implied by the title anyway. Lonergan is a badass of action, not words. When people of the town are kidnapped by the alien ships, though, he leads an outing to retrieve them, and thoroughly saves the town from their foreign visitors. Lonergan's story is the story of "Cowboys & Aliens," and the film rightly focuses on him. That said, the script doesn't leave everyone else alone, giving us so much plot and so many split ends to recon- nect by the end of the story that the film has nary a chance of succeed- ing. The film is slightly redeemed by Craig, who has his character- istic serious look and James Bond physicality. He is utterly likeable and plays each scene with a subtle- ty the entire cast and production around him seems to severely lack. The visuals are also occasion- ally sumptuous. The collision of fluorescent blue alien light and the wide brown expanse of the desert create moments of gooey special effects goodness, but the Wild West town footage has the unshak- able feeling of the archetypal soundstage setup. And if you're wondering about the aliens - they're CGI disgust- ing, scary and ruthless. Movie aliens are becoming more and more physically complex, it seems, if the two blockbuster alien films this summer are any indication. Can't quite rope in sci-fi too, podner. Tryingto provide a counterpoint of sorts to the cowboys and Indians concept, "Cowboys & Aliens" tries hard to bring in an outside force and create a situation in which all earthlings can unite. In the end, it has few real statements to make, and is derailed into a muddled series of pointless moments with over-developed and boring sup- porting characters. It seemed like a great concept - ripe for the 21st century, a rein- vigorating combination of things we've seen before - but Favreau ends up finding the worst of each of its genres, resulting in two half- films whose sum is less than its parts. By EMILY BOUDREAU Daily Arts Writer "Crazy" and "stupid" are two adjectives that can be used to describe not only love, but this movie. Ulti- mately, it's people doing crazy, stupid Crazy things in the name of love ... Stupid Love for two hours. At Quality16 Cal (Steve and Rave Carell, "Date Night) has Warner Bros. been married to Emily (Juli- anne Moore, "The Kids Are All Right") for a very long time. In fact, she's the only woman he's ever been with, but she cheats on him. Luckily, Cal runs into Jacob (Ryan Gosling, "Blue Valentine"), who gives him a makeover. Cal is told that he should never wear New Balance sneakers (unless he is in a fraternity or Steve Jobs), and is taught how to pick up women. Incidentally, there are many beautiful women in his town who are just waiting to be hit on by 40-and-up gentlemen. In a "Love Actually" fashion, there are several side plots that are forced, with bizarre twists and the might of the scriptwrit- ers, to connect at the end. The movie doesn't sound all that terrible - in fact, it sounds like the perfect carefree summer movie. It's fluff, a kind of make- over movie for guys. Except, the movie has no charm and is really just cringe-inducingly embar- rassing at times, like when Cal's 17-year-old babysitter takes sexy nude photos of herself to send to an older man. There's nothing cute about that. In fact, that's a serious issue that doesn't make for lighthearted fun. Despite this oversight, the vast majority of the movie's humor doesn't depend on outrageous jokes or big explosions. It's sub- tle, restrained, and much more situational. At the same time, though, the movie is not astute. There are no biting insights and it doesn't really explore the rela- tionships and the love between the characters Even Steve Carell himself, the master of dramatic awkward situ- ations as demonstrated by his stint as Michael on TV's "The Office," just can't pull off that kind of com- edy in this movie. The problem is that Carell is trying to play the nice guy, the perfect dad who gets stuck in bad situations instead of causing them. And that's not funny. At rare moments, he does manage to come through as his comical self, but only briefly, and when his character is drunkenly and bitterly berating a cocktail waitress, or, as he calls her a "cock- tail servant." The rest of the cast, while talented, also struggles a bit. Gosling just acts as a womaniz- ing guru with perfectly chiseled abs and impeccable dress sense. But he's a shallow character and when he does undergo a change and falls in love, it's hard to understand why. His revealing that he likes to buy things off of infomercials doesn't lay bare to the audience the depths of the character's soul. And that's a consistent prob- lem with the movie, not just with Gosling's character - though there's an earnest attempt to reveal the inner workings of the characters and their relation- ships, any insight is lost in the chaotic plotline and awkward situational comedy. 0 0 "I just can't ... I just can't pull of the V-neck."