David Koechner Page 3

Based on ancient mythology, this Christmas horror movie has a gleefully nasty attitude that makes it entertaining even if it isn't properly frightening. This is mainly because the marauding monsters remain sketchy at best, never developing anything more than a superficial sense of dread. But the ace cast is terrific at engaging the audience,and the filmmakers keep viewers gripped as they play merrily with cliches from both horror and holiday movies.

It opens on a recognisably stressed-out Christmas season, as Tom and Sarah (Adam Scott and Toni Collette) feel their relationship straining under the pressure of work and holiday plans. They and their teen kids Beth and Max (Stefania LaVie Owen and Emjay Anthony) are dreading the arrival of their Aunt Linda and Uncle Howard (Allison Tolman and David Koechner) and their boorish kids. Then the drunken Aunt Dorothy (Conchata Ferrell) turns up unannounced. Tom's German mother (Krista Stadler) watches all of this with a silent, knowing dread. But the real threat is outside the house, as a vicious ice storm settles in, knocking out the power and unleashing a ferocious Anti-Santa and his evil gang of elves and killer toys.

The film is strikingly well shot and edited, as director Michael Dougherty orchestrates the comedy, drama and action to focus on the gifted actors. While the design and in-camera effects are clever, much of the digital effects work is ropey, giving the movie a cartoonish sheen. And the monsters themselves are eerily expressionless: ghoulish puppets with immobile faces. So they're extremely creepy, but not particularly menacing, because they have no personalities at all. Thankfully, Scott, Collette, Koechner and Tolman are experts at sliding effortlessly between comedy, drama and terror. And young Anthony gives the film a blast of resonance as Max, a boy still young enough to believe in Santa who thinks he has brought all of this violence down on his family.

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Audiences out for a bit of mindless fun will probably enjoy this raucous road movie, but only if they can look past comedy that relies on jokes about racism, sexism and homophobia. And if the characters are all paper-thin, at least the film is loose and enjoyably silly.

It centres on Charlie (Shepard), who lives in rural California with his girlfriend Annie (Bell). But when she's offered a job in Los Angeles, Charlie has to face up to his criminal past. He's currently in witness protection, and returning to L.A. is very dangerous. Still, he decides to take Annie to her job interview, while his protective agent (Arnold) follows close behind. But trouble is brewing because Annie's still-smitten ex (Rosenbaum) is also in hot pursuit, and when he figures out Charlie's secret, he gets in touch with the gang boss, Alex (Cooper), who wants him dead.

While the film looks whizzy and is packed with banter that sounds offensive, everything is pretty half-hearted. The dialog continually touches on sexuality and ethnicity in ways that are more lazy than inappropriate, and the discussions of serious issues like gender roles have no depth at all. This is a movie essentially made up of nothing but stereotypes. Bell and Cooper just about manage to give their characters personalities, but everyone else has essentially one note. Most of the men are mere chucklehead idiots, while the women are male fantasies.

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Maddy (Panabaker) is back home in Arizona from grad school, working in the water park she owns with her breast-obsessed stepdad Chet (Koechner). But after the Lake Victoria disaster, prehistoric piranhas have migrated here, drawn to the park's chlorine. After consulting with wild-haired expert Goodman (Lloyd), Maddy tries to avert disaster with the help of deputy Kyle (Zylka) and nice-guy Barry (Bush), who are rivals for her affections. But as the summer launch party nears, Chet refuses to close the park.

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Why? Well, besides star Aaron Eckhart's flawlessly sumptuous performance as Naylor, I'll just quote a line from Naylor himself: "The beauty of argument is that if you argue correctly, you're never wrong." In the end, Nick Naylor is not just right; he's unquestionably the most passionate, most seductive man on the screen, and everyone else just looks limp and dull beside him.

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Anchorman launches us into the world of '70s broadcast journalism with local San Diego anchor Ron Burgundy (Will Ferrell) as the poster boy for men behaving badly. His supporting anchors introduce themselves by breaking the fourth wall with all the casual gusto of their on-air personas. There's good-ol'-boy Champ Kind (David Koechner) with sports, ladies' man Brian Fantana (Paul Rudd) in the field, and dumb-as-a-Brick Tamland (Steven Carell) on weather. They revel in their boys' club with gleeful ignorance of terms like "sexual harassment" until new reporter Veronica Corningstone (Christina Applegate) enters the fray. Improbably, Ron and Veronica hit it off until a series of events puts her in the co-anchor seat and professional jealousy rips them apart, sending Ron on a downward spiral.

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But the first hour of the movie is a punishing parade ofprotracted establishing, colorless characters and painful performancesthat make the picture's amusingly harebrained TV inspiration look likesophisticated action-comedy by comparison.

Seann William Scott (Stiffler from "AmericanPie") and Johnny Knoxville (MTV's "Jackass")play moonshine-running country cousins Bo and Luke Duke -- although theyhave little in common with the sexy charmers in cowboy hats and sparklingsmiles created so charismatically by John Schneider and Tom Wopat in 1979.Scott and Knoxville have re-imagined the characters as the Appalachianequivalent of frat boys, and their acting consists mostly of screaming"woo-hoo!" as they drive around dirt roads at 80 mph.

But at least these two are good for the occasional lowbrowlaugh. Candy-pop "singer" and professional celebrity JessicaSimpson steps into Catherine Bach's butt-hugging cut-off Levi's as sexpotkin Daisy Duke, and she's such a catastrophe as an actress that every timeshe opens her Barbie-doll mouth, just her fake Georgia drawl is enoughto make your ears bleed -- never mind her fumbling dialogue. Knowing whereher assets lie, writer-director Jay Chandrasekhar ("Club Dread,""Super Troopers") does his best to keep Simpson as silent andscantily clad as possible. But even in a bikini, she seems rigid and plastic.

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Jason Lee is usually the funniest guy in any Kevin Smith movie (Banky in "Chasing Amy," Azrael in "Dogma"). Julia Stiles has had fine comedic timing ever since her big splash in "10 Things I Hate About You." But they couldn't be more mismatched as romantic leads in "A Guy Thing."

A cold-feet comedy of accumulative misunderstandings about a groom-to-be who wakes up with a blonde in his bed the morning after his bachelor party -- and assumes the worst -- the movie spends most of its time mining very familiar territory. Lee hides the girl's forgotten panties, discovers she's his fiancée's cousin, and has generic nightmare run-ins with his future in-law and Stiles' ex-boyfriend.

Most of its jokes come from the compounding lies that make it hard to sympathize with the hero, and the moment you meet each one-trait character, you can see his or her entire story arc mapped out in front of you. Example: Stifled Lee, who's going to veer from his buttoned-up, conservative bride-to-be (Selma Blair) and fall in love with wild-child Stiles, has a buttoned-up, conservative brother (Thomas Lennon) who is secretly in love with Blair. Hmmm...I can't imagine where that's going.

Continue reading: A Guy Thing Review