Bryce Zabel's MOVIE SMACKDOWN!

Marley & Me (2008) -vs- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008)

Comparing Apples and Oranges

The Smackdown. The tabloids made me do it. The temptation to compare Brad’s and Jen’s films, both opening on Christmas Day was too much for the Merchants of Venom (and now for me); Jen won Round One of their manufactured box office face-off. But this smackdown has precious little to do with money. Everyone has loved and lost a dog or two, but few have lived life backwards. The artistically ambitious “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” battles the unapologetically sappy Boy-Meets-Dog-Boy-Loses-Dog crowd-pleaser “Marley & Me.” Both films aim to earn your tears and laughter, and both succeed in some measure. Which tabloid darling most successfully rises above their ubiquity? It’s Brad versus Jen for realsies.

The Challenger.  In the already wildly successful “Marley & Me,” Jennifer Aniston and Owen Wilson marry, buy a dog, have some kids, and hit forty. Based on a book compiled of John Grogan’s newspaper columns, the movie is his fairly honest (if not terribly insightful) reflection on a somewhat prickly modern marriage with its requisite ups and downs. It’s “Revolutionary Road” with a puppy and a way better real estate broker. The dog is a total hellion; the world is his all-you-can-eat buffet, and his family adores him beyond all reason as dog-loving families are wont to do.

Bridget Jones's Diary (2001) -vs- When Harry Met Sally... (1989)

Love Amid the Party Favors

The Smackdown. I can’t criticize anyone who’s not struck by the party mood as 2008 lurches to a merciful end. Recession, foreclosures, unemployment. Really, what’s to celebrate, so let’s see how a pair of seasonal movies rise above the gloom. The characters that populate “When Harry Met Sally…” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary” survive the holiday gauntlet with their dignity intact. Both films beat back loneliness and offer inspiration. These days we’re all looking for that recipe. That’s what this Smackdown is all about: Whose New Year’s Eve party do you want to attend?   

Director Rob Reiner struck gold “When Harry Met Sally…” opened in 1989. The package had everything: a smart, Oscar nominated script from Nora Ephron, and several memorable scenes replayed and parodied over the years. The performances still hold up. Surrounding this is great music from both Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Irving Berlin, Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington.

“Bridget Jones’s Diary” quickly found a worldwide audience in Sharon Maguire’s 2001 feature film directorial debut. Helen Fielding, Andrew Davies and Richard Curtis adapted Fielding’s popular novel about a London woman concerned about love, her career prospects and her weight. Renee Zellweger shows an easy comic touch with a British accent.

Both movies offer much to celebrate; one more than the other.

The Challenger. After another lousy New Year’s Eve, Bridget Jones starts keeping a diary amid high hopes. She wants to drop some weight, cut back on smoking and drink less. Bridget is not very successful there, or in love. She falls for her scoundrel boss, Daniel Cleaver (Hugh Grant), who likes her well enough until a new thrill comes along. Cleaver is charming, predatory, funny and betrayal comes easily for him. Just ask lawyer Mark Darcy (Colin Firth) whose wife ran off with his best man, Daniel Cleaver. Bridget’s parents (Jim Broadbent and Gemma Jones) fitfully try to match her with Darcy. He’s becoming interested in a roundabout way but Bridget is not. She’s too busy with her new job as a TV reporter. It’s not going well until Darcy helps her land the big interview. Bridget is still enthralled by the scraps of attention Cleaver tosses her way. Mark Darcy barely shows his cards: “..What I’m trying to say..very inarticulately.. is that despite appearances I like you. Very much.” Bit by bit Bridget’s eyes are opened to Darcy’s submerged decency and Cleaver’s utter lack of character.

Diner (1982) -vs- The Apartment (1960)

Celebrate the New Year's Eve Classics!

The Smackdown. There are a surprising number of worthwhile New Year’s Eve-themed films to consider watching should other more social-type plans fail to materialize for you. I’m no drinker, no party animal; subsequently, New Year’s Eve has always been something of a non-starter. Usually, I stay home and watch a movie or two. Or three. In doing so, I figure my odds on dealing with drunk drivers are infinitesimally small. I have chosen a few of my own personal favorites to recommend because in so doing I could justify re-watching them. I’ve even concocted some fuzzy holiday math for you. We’re celebrating the New Year, 2009. "The Apartment" ends on New Year’s Eve 1959 as does 1982’s "Diner." So…if you don’t pay terribly close attention to my slightly fudged calculations, it’s fifty years. That’s practically a golden anniversary. After half a century of social upheaval, what’s really changed? More importantly, what film’s most worth revisiting for a truly happy start to your new year?

The Challenger. Barry Levinson’s autobiographical Valentine to Baltimore Bromance, "Diner" introduced an absolutely stellar ensemble cast including Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, Kevin Bacon, Tim Daly, Paul Reiser, and Ellen Barkin. Five young men on the cusp of adulthood ease the pain of their imminent passage by clinging together and hanging out. All the character-revealing action (and there’s plenty) takes place over a holiday break between Christmas and New Year’s 1959. The dialogue is brilliant and convincingly real; it has the easy improvisational feel of eavesdropping on conversation. The performances are uniformly excellent. Levinson had been writing for television and films for fifteen years before this, his big directing breakthrough. He subsequently returned to his Baltimore roots a few more times with "Avalon" and "Tin Men" and "Liberty Heights." It’s proven fertile creative ground for him and for his audience.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008) -vs- Forrest Gump (1994)

Separated at Birth?

The Smackdown.  Walking out of "Forrest Gump" in 1994, I remember thinking to myself that they ought to make more films like it.  A decade and a half later they've done just that and it's called "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."  Both touching films are huge accomplishments in story, direction, effects and general envelope-pushing that owe a common source for their originality to screenwriter Eric Roth.  This time he's gone back further in time from Gump's baby-boomer adventures to Button's that span the years from World War I to present day.  Both leading men are blank-slates who seem to end up (Zelig-like) in the middle of big events where their voice-over is used to lead us through the narrative.  The movies also take place in the South, share a female free-spirit love interest, a strong single mom, and folk wisdom "catch phrases."  Does "Button" build on "Gump" or is it just a pale imitation?  That's the Smack attack here.

The Challenger.  "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" owes its concept to the famous remark by Mark Twain that the best part of life comes at the beginning and the worst at the end, and a short story that F. Scott Fitzgerald made out of it in 1921.  The film takes just the essence, though, and tells a new story entirely.  Basically, it's about a baby born on the day World War I ends who is biologically a very old man and who grows younger day by day.  It's a wonderful "what-if" to contemplate, down to the possibility that Button (Brad Pitt) could meet the love of his life when he's an old man and she's a kid, have a love affair when they're about the same age, and then end up with her as an old woman taking care of him when he's just a child.  The scope director David Fincher brings to the screen is large: from its WWI beginning, the film takes us all the way to modern times and Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.

Nothing Like the Holidays (2008) -vs- Four Christmases (2008)

Fractured Family Christmases

The Smackdown.  Let's give thanks this Christmas season for a small miracle.  Between the two holiday films getting Smacked around here, there isn't a guy who's becoming Santa, or Santa's brother, or even an overgrown Elf forced to make it in the big city.  Instead we have more-or-less semi or comically real families trying to sort out their differences when they're forced to hang-out together and share a little winter wonderland quality time.  Instead of often lame attempts at wringing some forced laughs out of the fantasy of Christmas legend, both of our competitors serve up another theme that's gaining currency in these days of corruption, panic and collapse: the edgy holiday movie.  

"Nothing Like the Holidays" offers Christmas with a Latin beat in Chicago while "Four Christmases," which began looking for laughs right after Thanksgiving and has been gangbusters at the box-office, gives us self-absorbed millennial yuppies (muppies?) forced to deal with the debris of families torn apart by divorce and separation.  Film families forced into close quarters at Christmas.  Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em.  The question is:  which one here offers a real Christmas present and which is a slice of stale fruitcake?

The Challenger.  It's Christmastime in Northwest Chicago and the magnet of familial obligation draws the Rodriguez family together. It's a distinctive group that populates "Nothing Like the Holidays."  Strong willed parents Edy and Anna Rodriguez (Alfred Molina and Elizabeth Pena) are reflected in the vivid personalities of their children: Jesse (Freddy Rodriguez), just back from a tour in Iraq and haunted by the experience; lawyer brother Mauricio (John Leguizamo); actress sister Roxanna (Vanessa Ferlito).  They all open their baggage during a weeklong visit: Anna publicly accuses Edy of adultery and demands a divorce.  Mauricio and his Anglo wife, Sarah (Debra Messing) squabble over starting a family; Roxanna frets over an acting career stuck in low gear.

Complications arise: Jesse can't sort out his feelings toward the woman he dumped, Marissa. Sarah discovers Edy is neither a philanderer nor the robust man of the house.  Violence threatens to erupt outside the family circle, and Mauricio manages to alienate everyone within it.  These issues play out against a colorful backdrop of Latino Christmas with its distinctive sights and and observed rhythms.  Writers Rick Najera, Ted Perkins and Alison Swan handle matters as effectively as that assembly line of relatives making Christmas tamales at my Aunt Virginia's house.