6 — Friday, February 22, 2019
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

By Patti Varol
©2019 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
02/22/19

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

02/22/19

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Friday, February 22, 2019

ACROSS
1 Information desk 
sign
6 Sits in a cellar, 
say
10 Chuckleheads
14 Yuletide name
15 Philanthropist 
Wallace
16 Grammy-winning 
rapper
17 Totally rad 
electric guitar 
performance?
19 Short copy?
20 Upper bod 
muscle
21 Poor Richard, 
really
22 Brusque
23 Emergency 
bucket on Dior’s 
boat?
27 Nonbeliever
29 Shoreline flood 
protection
30 Caper film event
31 Actor Danson
32 Dessert chain 
with Cotton 
Candy Freeze
36 Travel guide
37 Jib made of 
clothing labels?
41 SE state
42 “When all __ 
fails ... ”
44 “Let ‘er __!”
45 Zac of 
“Baywatch”
47 Error
49 Master piece?
51 Where to find 
more beach 
toys?
55 Expunge
56 Mahershala of 
“True Detective”
57 IMAX purchase
59 X-ray, Yankee, __
60 Impressive 
New York zoo 
peacock display?
64 Phone button 
abbr.
65 X-ray units
66 Starbucks size
67 Double __ Oreos
68 “If you don’t 
mind?”
69 In other words, in 
Caesar’s words

DOWN
1 “Crikey!”
2 Berth place
3 Healthy snack

4 Puts a cover on, 
as a bed
5 Jargon suffix
6 Astros’ MLB 
division
7 Really big
8 “The House With 
a Clock in Its 
Walls” director 
Roth
9 “On the Road” 
narrator
10 Secondary 
wager
11 Integra maker
12 “For every 
generation” soft 
drink
13 1943 penny 
metal
18 Hitting stat
22 Paramount 
Network, once
24 “Norma Rae” 
director
25 Writer’s block 
breakthrough
26 German wheels
27 Words of lament
28 Marsh duck
31 Cough syrup 
meas.
33 Actress who 
plays Kimmy 
Schmidt’s 
landlady

34 Allied group
35 Jerk
38 “Sunday Night 
Baseball” 
analyst, familiarly
39 One often taking 
a bow
40 Helen of Troy’s 
mother
43 Try to find 
oneself?
46 Made moth 
moves
48 Half and half

49 House speaker 
after Ryan
50 Neat as __
51 Amazon founder
52 Blow one’s stack
53 Ivy in Conn.
54 Resistant to cold, 
as plants
58 Small songbirds
60 Parka sleeve
61 “Listen, ewe!”
62 Income tax 
Amendment
63 Hammered

Some movies have the distinct ability to be 
forgotten as soon as the end credits start rolling. 
“Isn’t It Romantic?” is one of them. I remember 
laughing a couple of times and cringing many 
more, but, for the most part, I remember feeling 
nothing. I think that’s the best way to describe 
this film: nothing, a pit of nothingness. And no 
amount of uncomfortable musical sequences 
and flashy colors can remedy that. “Isn’t It 
Romantic?” desperately tries to be both a satire 
and a comedy, but because it fails to effectively 
be either, it hardly leaves an impact.
As a lifelong lover of romantic comedies, I 
was actually quite excited to see the film. Based 
on its marketing, it seemed that the movie was 
appealing to people just like me — people who 
adore the genre and would surely recognize 
its many references to iconic rom-coms of days 
gone by. While the movie is certainly aware of its 
predecessors and actively references them, the 
references are nowhere near as funny or original 
as the movie wants them to be. On a strictly 
nostalgic level, “Isn’t It Romantic?” disappoints.
The premise of “Isn’t It Romantic?” is 
anything but groundbreaking. Other romantic 
comedy satires like “Not Another Teen Movie” 
and “They Came Together,” while also pretty 
bad, do exactly what “Isn’t It Romantic?” tries 
to do, but often in much more entertaining and 
original ways. On top of that, the movie treats 
its audience as if it isn’t already aware of the 
countless tropes that plague the genre. The vast 
majority of rom-com enthusiasts are already 
well aware of the common cliches (the gay best 

friend, the mandatory makeover scene, for 
example). The movie refuses to acknowledge the 
fact that most rom-com lovers don’t watch rom-
coms for their intellectual and artistic merits; 
rather, rom-coms serve as a source of escapism 
from the mundanity of daily life. A character in 
the movie actually makes this exact point early 
on, but it’s immediately glossed over. “Isn’t It 
Romantic?” condescends its audience by making 
the obvious tropes it points out appear newly 
discovered.

Nevertheless, the movie isn’t completely 
ineffective, mainly due to its surprisingly 
wonderful lead performances. This is the most 
human, most authentic Rebel Wilson (“How 
To Be Single”) I’ve seen yet. She isn’t defined 
by her size, as she seems to be in virtually every 
other film of comparable popularity. “Isn’t It 
Romantic?” presents Wilson as a fully human 
being, a woman whose size is a part of her, but 
not all of her. She’s funny and relatable and 
real. Her primary love interest, Adam DeVine 
(“When We First Met”), also does a great job. 

DeVine, like Wilson, is another victim of type-
casting. And while “Isn’t It Romantic?” plays off 
of DeVine’s signature brand of comedy, it gives 
him much more to work with. Not only is he 
funny and a bit eccentric, he’s also introspective, 
thoughtful and romantic.
Although Wilson and DeVine are more 
widely known as on-screen lovers in the “Pitch 
Perfect” franchise, their relationship in “Isn’t 
It Romantic?” is significantly improved. While 
their characters in “Pitch Perfect” seem to be 
coupled together solely because they’re the 
oddballs of their respective acapella groups, 
their coupling in this movie actually makes 
sense. They have palpable chemistry and the 
personalities of the characters mesh naturally. 
Their time together on-screen is pretty enjoyable 
to watch; the problem is that there’s simply not 
enough of it. Instead, the movie chooses to focus 
on what it deems to be much more important: 
endless montages and utterly meaningless 
dance sequences.
“Isn’t It Romantic?” fails in nearly all respects. 
It’s not original enough to be a worthwhile satire, 
and it’s not romantic enough to be on par with 
the rom-coms it’s mocking. The performances 
of Wilson and DeVine are simply not enough 
to save it. I sincerely hope this movie isn’t the 
one to usher in a new era of romantic comedies. 
However, if it is, the genre will have become yet 
another victim to the modern age of nostalgia-
obsessed entertainment. In order to recover 
from this before it’s too late, it’s crucial that 
filmmakers strive to work against everything 
this movie stands for and create movies that 
respect the foundations of the genre while still 
adding onto the canon in exciting and innovative 
ways.

‘Isn’t It Romantic?’ isn’t, actually

FILM REVIEW

ELISE GODFRYD
For the Daily

When 
I 
babysat 
young 
children 
over 
the 
summer, 
I often gave them connect-
the-dots 
workbooks. 
These 
activities 
take 
more 
forethought and precision than 
you might expect. Neglect or 
misappropriate 
connections 
between the dots, and by the 
time you’re finished and inspect 
the big picture, you have no idea 
what you’re looking at. Now, the 
two- and five-year-old whom 
I babysat often impressed me 
with their efforts to connect 
the dots and sometimes their 
accuracy as well. Unfortunately, 
the 
endeavor 
becomes 
less 
impressive the older you get, so 
I cannot let the trio of adult men 
(Gustavo Steinberg, “End of the 
Line,” Gabriel Bitar, “Cidade 
Cinza” and Andre Catoto, “Say 
I am Only Seventeen”) who 
directed “Tito and the Birds” 
off the hook.
In the opening sequence 
of their animated children’s 
film “Tito and the Birds,” they 
outline an ambitious, disparate 
set of dots to connect. First and 
most conventionally, given the 
genre, they establish the titular 
young character Tito’s (Pedro 
Henrique) family dynamics: an 
inventor father named Rufus 
(Matheus Nachtergaele, “City 
of God”) who Tito idolizes, 
and an overprotective mother 
Rosa (Denise Fraga, “Norma”). 
Then, of course, come the birds. 
The first invention of Rufus’s 
we see is a machine intended 
to interpret the language of 
birds, for, as Rufus impresses 
upon his son, birds have been 
watching out for mankind from 
the beginning. This machine 
also sets the story in motion one 
night when it malfunctions and 
injures Tito, and an indignant 
Rosa sends Rufus packing. A 
third point raised in “Tito,” 
perhaps more compelling than 
any other, is that of the role the 
media plays in fearmongering, 
articulated 
through 
Alaor 
Souza (Matheus Solano, “Amor 

á Vida”), a sensationalist TV 
personality 
who 
dominates 
characters’ screens throughout 
the film that ensues.
Family, 
fearmongering, 
birds. Birds save family from 
fearmongering? Maybe. These 
dots are tentatively linked in 
the opening sequence, but the 
connections become stretched 
and overwrought in due time, 
as well as undermined when 
they drop the ball on other 
points that arise along the way 
(the most notable example of 

which are class distinctions in 
the film, which are only ever 
addressed haphazardly). Most 
disappointing of all, this anti-
fearmongering film scared me, 
on several counts.
The 
first 
count: 
they 
misrepresent fear. There is a 
fine line between exaggerating 
the 
visual 
dimension 
of 
concepts 
to 
appeal 
to 
children and oversimplifying 
complexities to make them 
more digestible for a particular 
audience. “Tito” consistently 
teeters on the brink of the latter. 
Intending 
to 
represent 
the 
debilitating, divisive effects of 
paranoia on society, the makers 
of “Tito and the Birds” render 
fear as an epidemic, highly 
contagious and with ghastly 
bodily consequences. In the 
process, they confound physical 

disability 
and 
psychological 
states in a troubling way. 
People with disabilities do not 
have a choice in the matter; 
consumers of media and the 
disciples of media pundits who 
abuse their platforms, on the 
other hand, do. This misleading 
message about disabilities may 
effectively scare children out of 
succumbing to fearmongering, 
but it’s at the expense of an oft-
misrepresented population.
On the topic of scaring 
kids away from fear, there 
lies the second count: the 
visuals themselves. At first 
enticing for their novelty (a 
likely descendent of “Loving 
Vincent,” 
comprised 
largely 
of oil paintings in motion), the 
imagery in “Tito and the Birds” 
becomes overly saturated with 
the fear the protagonists of the 
film try to resist. I doubt the 
intended audience of children 
will have the same resolve as 
Tito when confronted with 
disturbing graphics, such as the 
Jabba the Hutt-esque, reverse 
metamorphosis those afflicted 
with 
the 
fear 
“outbreak” 
undergo.
The third count is all about 
the birds, for “Tito and the 
Birds” 
is 
a 
well-disguised 
but problematic portrayal of 
man’s relationship with the 
environment. 
“Tito” 
teems 
with modern technology; it 
would seem Rufus’s admonition 
to once more listen to the 
birds would beseech respect 
for nature in spite of the 
industrialized, digitized world. 
Unfortunately, in “Tito,” the 
birds get nothing in return for 
their wisdom. We might never 
get past exploitative model of 
our relationship with nature if 
we do not even have the gall to 
imagine a mutual relationship 
in a children’s film.
If I were still babysitting, 
we’d skip “Tito.” We would 
keep working on connecting 
the dots, and maybe we’d form 
an image of a bird. But maybe 
then we’d add a few dots and 
draw ourselves. Imagine what it 
would look like to have genuine 
respect for the natural world.

‘Tito’ truly frightened me

JULIANNA MORANO
Daily Arts Writer

SHOUT! STUDIOS

FILM REVIEW

‘Tito and 
the Birds’

Shout! Studios

State Theatre

The early ’70s are often 
romanticized — good vibes, 
groovy music and sociopolitical 
activism. It can simultaneously 
be said that the early ’70s were 
a time of heightened anxiety. 
These years came in the wake 
of 
JFK’s 
assassination, 
the 
Vietnam 
War, 
the 
Manson 
murders, 
the 
Civil 
Rights 
Movement 
and 
the 
beginnings 
of 
the 
Beatles’s 
something 
like desolate “hippy” 
era.
The 
UMMA’s 
exhibition 
“Abstraction, 
Color, 
and Politics in the 
Early 1970s” captures 
the unnerving vibe of 
the era through four 
large-scale 
works 
by American artists 
contemporary 
to 
the 
time: 
Helen Frankenthaler, Louise 
Nevelson, Sam Gilliam and Al 
Loving. The former are Jewish 
women, the latter Black men.
The emphasis of the gallery 
tour was heavily placed on public 
evaluation of art in the ’70s. 
Whether art was considered 
“good art” to critics and viewers 
depended on its ability to help 
advance social movements. The 
emphasis of social value was 
placed on feminism and civil 
rights in the case of these artists, 
given the politics of the era and 
the artists’ identities. Activism 
was difficult to navigate in 
the context of abstract art on 
the premise of its abstraction 
— their work didn’t mean the 

same thing to any one person. In 
turn, these artists received mass 
criticism because their art was 
“not political enough.”
Al 
Loving’s 
response 
to 
this criticism was perhaps the 
most jarring part of the talk. 
Loving was the first African 
American artist to have his own, 
one-person exhibition at the 
Whitney Museum of American 
Art in New York City less than 

a year after he moved there. He 
was immediately hailed in the 
white, upper-class art scene and 
became popular among buyers 
and patrons. He’d risen to fame. 
At a certain point, however, 
Loving began to lose touch 
with his work. The demand was 
so high that he began hiring 
assistants to paint for him, and 
he consequently slipped away 
from self-expression in his art.
Loving was simultaneously 
criticized 
by 
Black 
critics 
and activists of the time, who 
claimed that his art was far 
removed from Black activism 
and the Civil Rights Movement. 
They further criticized Loving 
for not using his momentous 
career to support and further 

the 
Movement, 
given 
his 
identity as a Black American 
artist. Loving was devastated by 
this criticism, so much so that 
he destroyed most of his work.
The 
women 
artists, 
Frankenthaler and Nevelson, 
had to consider vastly different 
political 
expectations 
in 
their art. Women artists were 
expected to both avoid and 
embody femininity in their 
work. 
They 
were 
expected 
to 
find 
a 
space 
between 
feminist and feminine 
— they were not to be 
too much of one or 
the 
other. 
Delicacy 
in 
female 
art 
was 
criticized, but so was 
violence. 
This 
was 
considered dangerous 
in 
abstraction, 
given its room for 
interpretation. 
As 
a 
result, 
both 
Frankenthaler 
and 
Nevelson 
resisted 
politics 
altogether 
in 
their 
work. However, Frankenthaler’s 
Sunset Corner is reminiscent of 
a menstrual painting, but the 
viewer can make of that what 
they will.
The gallery talk ultimately 
distilled 
common 
narratives 
around the ’70s and around 
the general politicization of 
art, making a statement about 
what it means to navigate 
being an artist of an oppressed 
demographic 
in 
a 
time 
of 
political strife and upheaval. 
The 
talk 
gave 
necessary 
background on these artists that 
otherwise couldn’t be inferred 
from the exhibit alone, making 
their work more profound, even 
today.

Apolitical art as inherently
political: A trip to UMMA

COMMUNITY CULTURE REVIEW

JENNA BARLAGE
Daily Arts Writer

GORDON PARKS/THE LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES

The emphasis of the gallery 
tour was heavily placed on 
public evaluation of art in the 
’70s.

‘Isn’t It 
Romantic?’

Warner Bros. Pictures

Ann Arbor 20 + IMAX

