Friday reviews: 8 September 2023

My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, The Nun II, The Innocent and Theater Camp are all in cinemas, Merkel is on DocPlay and The Jewel Thief is on Disney+

I heard once that Tom Hanks (and wife Rita Wilson) made more money from pro­du­cing My Big Fat Greek Wedding for their good friend Nia Vardalos than any­thing they did for themselves.

It was a phe­nomen­on back in 2002, the first sequel took a while to arrive (2016) and now we have a third, My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3, the first to be dir­ec­ted by Vardalos as well as being writ­ten by her.

I’m sorry to report that the actu­al film­mak­ing on dis­play here is pretty inept but there’s a fun­da­ment­al decency about the pro­ject that encour­ages me to … look the oth­er way.

A proudly out non-binary char­ac­ter, some whole­some reflec­tions on the migrant exper­i­ence (espe­cially com­pared with the Syrian refugees attempt­ing to rebuild their lives on the Greek island that the Portokalos fam­ily used to call home) are coun­ter­bal­anced by scat­ter­shot eth­nic ste­reo­typ­ing and some lazy plotting.

The Portokalos fam­ily en masse have been invited back to the home vil­lage for a reunion – the first vis­it for any of them – and to ful­fil the dying wishes of their recently deceased pat­ri­arch (played in the earli­er films by the late Michael Constantine). He wanted his child­hood friends to be giv­en his journ­al so they could see all the things he got up to after he left them for America.

The world ‘nos­tal­gia’ comes from the Greek so, I sup­pose, it’s only fair that they get to reclaim it here. 

The Nun II is a much bet­ter made film than MBFGW3 but has far few­er sav­ing graces.

Part of the ever-expanding Conjuring uni­verse, this film is a sequel to The Nun (obvi­ously) in which Taissa Farmiga plays Sister Irene, a com­bin­a­tion of Max von Sydow in The Exorcist and Miss Marple. But younger.

This com­bin­a­tion of demon­ic hor­ror and Brokenwood-style clue-following makes for a plod­ding time inter­rup­ted by occa­sion­al bouts of lengthy expos­i­tion and some sporad­ic bloody violence.

As I’ve been away from the day-to-day busi­ness of review­ing for a while, I am unfa­mil­i­ar with how all these films are sup­posed to fit togeth­er and there was noth­ing about The Nun II that made want to know more – it really does pre­sup­pose you’ll know who all of these people are.

Louis Garrel is French cinema roy­alty – a third gen­er­a­tion star – and since 2015 has also been a film­maker of note in his own right.

His latest, The Innocent, is a per­plex­ing mish-mash of genres and tones mak­ing it hard to know how you are sup­posed to be respond­ing at any giv­en moment. There’s noth­ing wrong with keep­ing an audi­ence on its toes but this was unsatisfying.

Garrel plays a young man whose moth­er (Anouk Grinberg) teaches theatre to con­victed felons – a detail plucked from Garrel’s auto­bi­o­graphy – but who has a habit of fall­ing for her stu­dents – a detail not plucked from that auto­bi­o­graphy, at least I hope not.

Her recently released boy­friend (Roschdy Zem) encour­ages her to open a flor­ist busi­ness des­pite her hav­ing no exper­i­ence of either flowers or retail. Garrel’s char­ac­ter is mys­ti­fied at how it is being fun­ded and auto­mat­ic­ally assumes the worst.

The res­ult is a com­bin­a­tion of fam­ily melo­drama, farce, heist-gone-wrong film and – thanks to Noémie Merlant from Portrait of a Lady on Fire – tenu­ous rom­com, none of which works well enough on its own.

Last week, after watch­ing Past Lives, my wife and I wondered why it is that mod­ern cinema so often fails to take theatre as an art form seriously.

In Past Lives there is a rehears­al scene where aspir­ing play­wright Nora (Greta Lee) watches an act­or read an over­wrought mono­logue and it’s com­mon, I think, for theatre mak­ing to be per­ceived by film­makers as pre­cious, highly strung or some­how detached from reality.

Other examples are Adam Driver’s pom­pous theatre dir­ect­or in Marriage Story or delu­sion­al Michael Keaton in Birdman. In Asteroid City, the stage ver­sion of the story is kind of ridicu­lous – Jeff Goldblum smoking back­stage in his ali­en cos­tume – com­pared with the vivid­ness that cinema brings.

I know there are coun­ter­fac­tu­als but Theater Camp (dir­ec­ted, co-written by and star­ring Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman) is not one of them.

In this (now dis­cred­ited genre of) mock­u­ment­ary, we fol­low the inhab­it­ants of an upstate New York sum­mer camp ded­ic­ated to the per­form­ing arts. The own­er of the camp is in a coma after a seizure and her dim­wit influ­en­cer son (Jimmy Tatro) is in charge and the fin­an­cial situ­ation is perilous.

The kids are tal­en­ted and enthu­si­ast­ic, though, des­pite being the butt of as many jokes as the adults.

It’s not unfunny, I guess, but the tar­gets are cheap and punch­ing seems to be down rather than up in too many cases.

Theater Camp does take flight in the final scenes when the iron­ic detach­ment fails to hold out against the genu­ine sin­cer­ity of a good show­tune. In that regard, it’s a bit like anoth­er pro­duc­tion from Will Ferrell’s pro­duc­tion house Gary/Gloria Sanchez, Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga. You laugh at these people until you start laugh­ing with them (and then end up lov­ing them).

Now stream­ing on DocPlay after fea­tur­ing in the New Zealand International Film Festival, the por­trait of the former German chan­cel­lor Angela Merkel will make you nos­tal­gic for the dis­tant days of 2015 when it was still pos­sible to hope that prin­ciples, val­ues and lead­er­ship would be able to stand up against the tides of bull­shit, author­it­ari­an­ism, reflex­ive oppos­i­tion­al syn­drome and lazy cyn­icism we are con­fron­ted with now.

There’s a telling moment in the film when a White House staffer notes that at the end of Barack Obama’s farewell tour of Europe, Merkel had a tear in her eye while wav­ing away the president’s motor­cade. “I’ve nev­er seen that before,” said the incred­u­lous pres­id­ent. “I guess she knows she’s on her own now.”

Merkel is a good film and sol­id his­tory. It’s not that long ago but kids should know this stuff – German reuni­fic­a­tion, the refugee crisis, the unin­ten­ded con­sequences of rely­ing on Russian fossil energy – and this is a good place to start.

Finally, anoth­er dis­rep­ut­able genre, the true crime his­tory but The Jewel Thief (Disney+) is not without some interest.

Gerald Blanchard was a thief. Perhaps he still is. But when he was a full-time pro­fes­sion­al thief – from his high school days in the mid-80s until even­tu­al cap­ture in 2007 – he was a very good one. His fatal flaw was that his ego required that every­one knew pre­cisely how good a thief he was, which meant he video­taped almost everything he did.

Watching the young Blanchard, skinny kid with thick glasses, is like watch­ing a young Justin Bieber pre­tend­ing to be a gang­ster, but his ambi­tion, pre­par­a­tion and patience even­tu­ally turned him from a petty fraud­ster into a phe­nom­en­ally suc­cess­ful bank robber.

There are some fairly jaw-dropping moments in the film, not least the lax Canadian atti­tude to crimes against prop­erty which they took far less ser­i­ously than crimes of violence.

It’s not the first time that Blanchard’s tale has been told on screen and – con­sid­er­ing his need for the spot­light – prob­ably not the last.

Next Week

The sched­ule may change, obvi­ously, but next Friday I’ll be review­ing Kenneth Branagh’s third Poirot, A Haunting in Venice, minor DC super­hero Blue Beetle, and anoth­er reboot of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem as well as an Australian doc­u­ment­ary about migrat­ory shore­birds, Flyways.

And any­thing new and not­able that shows up via streaming.