‘(500) Days of Summer’ can’t quite breakup with the chick flick

It occasionally happens that there will be a romantic comedy that I want to see, although this greatly hinges on the on-screen presence of Zooey Deschanel.

It’s no surprise that my wife likes a happy ending to go along with her romantic comedies. I know that there is no way that she’ll go see a movie that begins with a breakup.

So, I had to concoct a new, more wife-friendly plot to get her interested in “(500) Days Of Summer.” My movie takes place in the post-glacial melt Arctic. Due to the warmer climate and the earth’s rotation, the characters really do have 500 days of summer as they try to bond amidst the occasional polar bear and a life floating on the water.

Since she eventually saw through my ruse and took me to the movie, I thought it fitting to include it on the list.

While “Summer” might be seen as an alternative to romantic comedies, it still has one foot in the world of “Never Been Kissed” and one foot in “Before Sunrise.”

Twentysomethings Tom (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) and Summer (Deschanel) are the happy couple who breakup near the beginning of the movie. Since the story jumps around among its 500-day timeline, this doesn’t occur at the chronological midpoint but soon enough for the audience to begin searching for fault lines.

I am often reminded that murder mysteries take one of two forms. Either you know what happened and you find out who the killer is or you know who did it, but you must figure out how. “Summer” is of the latter structure; we know early on that the two aren’t one anymore, and we are captivated to find out why. The movie would probably be a lot duller if not told in this structure, but that’s the point; which begs the question, if “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” were told in this fashion, would it be a good movie?

Another thing that makes “Summer” different from most movies like it, is it’s told from the guy’s perspective, and once you realize this, you see how it’s already in a class of its own. Showing this side of the relationship can be successful, as seen in “High Fidelity” or “I Love You Man,” but whether a guy-side movie called “Bro Actually…” or “Fried Green Buffalo Wings” can rake it in like their feminine counterparts can would be a risky gamble which would immediately backfire from the presence of a Renee Zellweger or Kate Hudson.

Still, “Summer” does borrow from more feminine oriented movies. We have the wacky best friends, the occasional voiceover and the wise-in-all-things-romance prepubescent girl. It’s these things that, to use a baseball metaphor, keep the movie from knocking it out of the park even though it hits a strong home run. If you can’t outdo “Pushing Daisies” in your voiceover, it’s not worth doing.

For every rom-com staple, we’re rewarded with genuinely good scenes like a musical dance number and a split screen telling of the main character’s perception of a party and what actually happened. There’s even a few Fellini and Ingmar Bergman references thrown in for good measure.

Though like its nonlinear storytelling, “Summer’s” male-centric lead is almost a gimmick, but a good one. There are more men that can identify with Tom’s ever-present iPod and real human feelings than with Matthew McConaughey and his lost shirt.

‘Leatherheads’ is more like ‘Montage:The Movie’

George Clooney can be thought of as the Gary Cooper or Cary Grant of our time, a leading man’s man. While the look and feel recall that era of movie star, “Leatherheads” just shows the world that, like Fletch, Clooney is the right man for any job. It’s not that he isn’t right for the part, it’s just that we see him here in another profession where he essentially plays himself (which is not necessarily a bad thing in a leading man.) We’ve seen George Clooney the escaped convict, George Clooney the spaceman, George Clooney the doctor, George Clooney the Batman and now we get George Clooney the football player. Strangely, there hasn’t been a movie with George Clooney the grocery store manager, yet.

“Leatherheads” aims to tell the story of the legitimization of professional football, a time before rules ruined things like dirty tricks, unsafe gear and low attendance numbers. We see Clooney, who at his age could never cut it even at the Pop Warner level, lead a ragtag team through what passes for pro football in that era.

College football, in contrast, is where the crowds are, and nowhere bigger than where Jon Krasinski, football star and war hero, is. Krasinski plays essentially the same character here as he does in his breakout role in “The Office” smug, comfortable in his own surroundings and irresistible to women under 5’6”.

This is where Renee Zellweger comes in to compete the love triangle. Clooney wants Krasinski as a ringer for his struggling Duluth Bulldogs team, reporter Zellweger wants Krasinski for a newspaper story and possible something else, and Clooney wants Zellweger to be his, uh, halfback.

This movie combines several different genres together: sports movie, screwball comedy, and even the journalist movie.

It’s not that I don’t believe Zellweger in the reporter role, but it’s almost boilerplate how in every movie, women seem to have one of three jobs: journalist, fashion designer or ad executive.

When Zellweger discovers that Krasinski’s war story is less Sergeant York and more Private Benjamin, she grapples with the implications of exposing him but also ruining her chances with the young football star.

One of the elements of a screwball comedy is the rapid-fire back and forth dialogue between the characters. This shows us two things: that both characters are trying to outwit each other through wordplay and audiences were a lot smarter when screwball comedies were actually made. Instead we get this:

Zellweger: (speaking slowly) Being the slickest operator in Duluth is sort of like being the world’s tallest midget, if you ask me!
Clooney: (pauses, then speaks) You know, it’s too bad we are so much alike, otherwise we would have gotten along perfectly!
Zellweger: (considers what has been said) I’ll live.
Clooney: (takes deep breath) Alone!

This is how it should play out:

Zellweger: Being the slickest operator in Duluth is sort of like being the world’s tallest midget, if you ask me!
Clooney: You know, it’s too bad we are so much alike, otherwise we would have gotten along perfectly!
Zellweger: I’ll live.
Clooney: Alone!

Notice the difference?

Yet, somewhere in all this, people manage to play a few games of football.

Like all sports movies, “Leatherheads” makes use of the montage. We’ve got montages to show the teams improvements, montages to show the hard times, montages to show the traveling between cites, montages that have that sepia-old-old-timey feel with the plunky piano music, there’s even a montage of montages.

The point of the montage is to show progress being made or time passing in a way that won’t bore the viewer. Having one every other scene defeats this purpose.

Like the predictable nature of the romantic comedy, the movie comes down to the Showdown where Clooney and Krazinski (sounds like a criminal duo if you say it a few times) square off at Soldier Field for The Showdown, which is moviespeak for a contest that will determine who Zellweger ends up with during the final montage.

And no, the two male leads are not the ones who ride off together on a motorcycle at the end. That would give the movie’s title a whole new meaning.

“Lovers on the Bridge” an exercise in amor and merde

Every once in a while I am granted a reprieve from the standard chick-flick fare and my wife rents something a little more on the arty side.

Sometimes it’s McConaughey. Sometimes it’s Fellini.

And sometimes it’s “Lovers on the Bridge.”

I was not immediately apprehensive to watching it, it did have the reliable Juliette Binoche in it. It took about eight minutes before the movie violated the Excrement Problem.

We are shown what happens to French vagrants after they are rounded up at night in a squalid bus, stripped down and hosed off.

It didn’t help that I was eating a chicken dinner while watching this.

I like to think I have an iron gullet, but it’s a no-win situation watching one of the lead performers gyrating in what I hope is prop poo.

I understand that the director was going for realism here, but there is really no good reason to show the drug-addled Alex taking a mud bath for more than 10 seconds. I get it, institutions for Paris’ homeless are filthy, but next time you are going to make a movie about bums falling in love, please, please imply the scatological aspects of the story. I’ll rent the documentary if I’m still curious.

In what must be an obscure reference in an obscure music video, the actor playing Alex also appears in a Thom Yorke/U.N.C.L.E. video where he is a troubled man being hit repeatedly by cars in a French tunnel. OK, here he only gets hit by one car and it’s in a Paris street, but the connection is made: this guy doesn’t do well with cars.

Thankfully, it’s not long before we’re introduced to the titular bridge, the Pont-Neuf, here being renovated for the French Revolution bicentennial. Since it’s being renovated, it provides the ideal place for street performer and substance addict Alex and another bum to make their living very much car-free.

It’s not long before Binoche wanders onto the bridge as an artist who’s gradually goes blind. Alex and Binoche form a bizarre symbiotic relationship: she needs him for sight and he needs her for a stable human connection.

As much as I disliked the movie’s pretentious feel, it did have one scene worthy of its inclusion in Cannes: as Binoche is almost totally blind, the older homeless man living on the bridge helps her break into a nearby art gallery. There, with the faintest of candlelight, he shows her the art that is slipping from her life forever. Since this happens at the middle of the movie, we aren’t sure where it will be headed.

When a treatment for her eye condition becomes available, Alex obsesses about loosing her and tears down posters trying to locate her and even goes so far as to set a man on fire to keep Binoche to himself.

At this point, I was hoping for anything to happen to Alex so Binoche can find a situation a little more stable.

When you find yourself cheering for the movie’s characters misfortune, you know you’ve got a problem. It’s no that Alex is an evil person, we realize that he may not be fully aware the damage his actions cause. It’s like he has the childlike simplicity of Michael Bay.

The issues I had with the movie fall chiefly on the characters who don’t know whats good for them. For all his obsessions about Binoche, whenever he not making hommes flambé, Alex seems incredibly bored and irritated when he’s with Binoche. Therefor it’s hard to see the beauty in the profane if the profane makes no attempt at improvement. Every cloud has a silver lining but it’s still a cloud.

My wife (who obviously loved the movie) explained that it showed that not all love stories are pretty or have the storybook happy ending.

Ok, granted, but love doesn’t need to be rolling around in poo either.

“Priceless” is like Tiffany’s without the breakfast

The movie “Priceless” deals with the two favorite things of the French people: sex and fashion. The other two favorite French things, cheese and berets are better saved for a review of “Frommage: Le Film.”

The star, Audrey Tautou is known to audiences west of the Atlantic for her roles in Amalie and the Da Vinci Code and plays not the descendent of Christ, but a cocktail waitress who attaches herself to wealthy men like a Brietling watch attaches itself to, well, wealthy men.

What we call a gold digger, Tautou’s character is the more sophisticate-sounding bon vivant pour le hommes.

The beginning of “Priceless” seems to draw a page from the “Pink Panther” movies: animated opening titles, 60s-style jazz, and a bumbling male lead.

The lead in question is Gad Elmaleh, here playing the same role as he did in “The Valet” as a hotel worker who pretends he’s more well-off than he really is.

When Elmaleh falls asleep on the job, Tautou mistakes him for a high roller and her next provider of Chanel dresses and Riviera hotel suites.

When her previous vieux protecteur (sugar daddy in Low English) leaves her. Tautou sees Elmaleh less as a star-crossed lover and more as an annoyance, as she bankrupts him at a high-class restaurant.

Despite her character’s shortcomings, it’s easy to see Tautou in this Holly Golightly-type roll, which has more to do with Breakfast at Tiffany’s than just the portrayal of those who will do anything to be among the ridiculously rich. As Elmaleh struggles with the bill, he inadvertently becomes the object of affection for an older widow, who soon foots the bill for a fancy hotel room and a new wardrobe, assuming the George Peppard role of “Priceless.”

Once Tatau realizes Elmaleh isn’t following her, she begins instructing him in the ways of her world, teaching him how to finagle things like $30,000 watches and Vespa scooters.

Movies like this fall into one of two categories: guy-gets-girl and girl-gets-guy. While the latter is more common, the former never sat well with me. Usually the guy tries to convince the girl that he’s worth going out with, usually that girl turns out of a type that rhymes with the thing you scratch. In movies like this, the guy goes through an hour and a half of rejection before the girl realizes she had been mistaken by treating him like dirt for the previous running time of the movie. Somehow I find this a little more implausible than the other variation.

In “Priceless” Tautou is far from a sympathetic character, especially as she milks everything Elmaleh has while remarking that she doesn’t really enjoy the caviar she eats all the time. After a while, you wonder why the hapless bartender even bothers.

Since we tend to get our game shows and not our comedies from oversees, it’s easy to see how “Priceless” could exist only in its Gallic form. Movies like this one are not unlike the fluffly pastries eaten in the film: filling for the moment, but ultimately empty and full of air.

Remaking this movie for American audiences makes about as much sense as remaking it’s spiritual predecessor “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Imagine Matthew McConehy and Rene Zellweger in the roles and it’s easy to spot a dud of “Gigli” proportions.

But therein lies the difference. Audiences seeing American actors doing the same things as their French counterparts may see the result as being reprehensible, but there is something that can be said for how much “the other” can get away with. American action movies are big hits oversees, but replace the leads with local stars and you get something that just doesn’t fit.

Kind of like an Hermes scarf on the neck of a Wal-Mart greeter.

“Twilight,” or somebody please, please stake me

On the surface, complaining that my wife forced me to watch a vampire movie seems kind of whiny.

But “Twilight” is no ordinary vampire movie.

Coffins have been replaced with Volvos. Vaporization in daylight has been replaced with sparking in daylight. Castles have been replaced by Frank Gehry-designed forest mansions. Vampire bats have been replaced by thunderous vampire baseball bats. Death by stake has been replaced by death by being torn apart into little pieces and set on fire. (OK that last one’s pretty cool.)

Vampires still suck blood, but the vamps central to the story are vegetarian and therefore will expect a laugh every time they explain that they only drink animals blood.

On the surface, the movie seems like “Dawson’s Creek” with goth kids, but unlike the WB show with it’s twentysomething high schoolers, most of the pre-college-aged characters are actually pre-college-aged actors.

Bella is a high school junior who movies from Phoenix to live with her father in the small town of Forks, Washington where it’s always overcast, enabling vampires to walk around during daylight without that embarrassing sparkly-dandruff look.

Don’t get too excited, rather than film in the real Forks or Phoenix, the filmmakers chose to shoot the entire movie in the Portland, Ore. area. This means fans of the books (read: teenage girls) will have to make the pilgrimage hundreds of miles to the middle of nowhere to see the actual 7-11 where Edward and Bella bought Slurpees from.

As long as we’re being nit-picky, are the vampires restricted to playing only vampire baseball (imagine if Barry Bonds was allowed to use steroids and had Flash-like speed) during thunderstorms to hide the sound? Do they have to wait for the rain if they want to shoot some vampire pool or play vampire tiddlywinks?

When another group of vampires crashes the baseball game (non-vegetarians for those keeping score at home), Bella and Edward flee to Oregon-disguised-as-Phoenix.

The final showdown takes place at night in a ballet studio while its raining, three things that Phoenix doesn’t really have.

This movie hints at some animosity between vampires and werewolves, but if you want some serious fang and fur action, you’ll have to wait at least two more movies. Hopefully the money raked in by the first movie alone will be able to go towards better special effects, especially considering the vampire’s sparkliness less resembles thousands of diamonds than Stage 4 leprosy.

I get that the main character has been dead for 80 plus years, so the fact that he speaks all his lines in a stiff and awkward fashion makes perfect sense given that talkies hadn’t been invented yet. Nope, Edward is strictly a pre-Chaplin man thrust into a post-Mamet world.

He’s played by Robert Pattinson, who’s character was killed in one of the Harry Potter movies, presumably causing Pattinson to look like he’s been binging on the garlic in every single picture taken of the actor.

The movie is as good as example as any of a faithful book-to-screen translation.

I know this because the teenage girls sitting behind me in the theater were able to quote not only every line, but they even nailed the tone and inflection. Compare this to the pair of middle-aged women sitting behind me in “Adaptation,” skimming their copies of “The Orchid Thief” looking for the part where Nicolas Cage splits in two only to be run over by a car later in the movie.

My wife also made me read (re: skim) the book prior to the movie, hoping I would share in her obsession for the abstinence-creature of the night (no necking until we’re married) series as she was, but as of this writing, I’ve put my progress in the third book on hiatus.

The series’ climactic decision (foreshadowed in the movie) is Bella wanting to choose between remaining a whiny teenager or becoming a whiny vampire.

Bella: Why won’t you make me a vampire? I really wanna be a vampire, waaaaa.

Edward: If I turn you into a vampire, you’ll be incredibly good looking like me, but have no soul and be doomed to wander the earth for eternity and have to drive ridiculously expensive cars.

Bella: But I wanna be with you forever because it sure beats having around me creepy werewolf friend.

Edward: You vant to be with me forever? (vampire accent added for effect). Uhh. Vait right here. (Turns into a bat, flies away)

Ah, young love.

“Miss Pettigrew Lives For A Day” joins the list of movie titles with multiple meanings

I hate movies with misleading titles. But I like movies that can tell an effective story in an hour and a half.

When my wife made me watch “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day,” I thought I was getting some sort of fantasy movie where the character ages uncommonly a la “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” or a murder mystery where the titular character has only 24 hours before the bad guy strikes.

What I actually got was a screwball romance set in pre-WWII bombed London.

The movie would more accurately be titled “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Lot of Days, One of Which is Presented Here for Comical Effect.”

How do I know it was a screwball comedy? In an early scene the characters run around an apartment to the soundtrack of a clarinet and high-hat cymbals. Nothing says zany like a high hat cymbal.

Here’s an example where the right instruments set the mood for the movie. Add staccato violins and bass and you’d have a suspense movie. Throw in a banjo and a moonshine jug and we’d have a getaway scene from “Bonnie and Clyde.” I think they were saving the horns and tympani for the sequel: “Miss Pettigrew Conquers the Huns.”

The apartment-scurrying characters are Pettigrew and her new employer Amy Adams. Pettigrew is an out of work nanny who thinks she’s about to babysit Adams’ child but soon realizes she has to untangle three of Adams’ suitors. There’s Nick, a nightclub owner who provides Adams with luxury, Phil a theater producer who can offer her fame, and Lee Pace as a jilted fiance who is Adams’ only chance at finding love.

Adams doesn’t know what she wants; fame will get her a career, riches will get her clothes and love with get neither of the two. Frances McDormand’s Pettigrew urges her to chose Pace’s penniless piano player.

Pettigrew herself is struggling to understand the world Adams so desperately wants to inhabit. One where a silk scarf is a casual castoff to one character but a prized possession of another and where cucumbers are not for eating but to keep the eyes puffy.

As she untangles Adams’ lovers, she herself falls under the affection of a lingerie-designer (played here by Ciaran Hinds, who was also Caesar from HBO’s “Rome”). Whenever I recognize character actors from other movies or TV shows, I wonder how the old characters would fare in their new situations. For example, would Brutus be so quick to stab Caesar if he knew of his penchant for making negligees or men’s socks? Would Adams be so quick to run off with Pace if she knew he had the ability to raise the dead as his character had in “Pushing Daisies?”

I realize this practice easily drifts into the fanboy area of IMDB-philes such as myself. Rather than speculate who would win in a fight between captains Kirk and Picard, I imagine if how McDormand’s Pettigrew would fare if she switched places with McDormand’s character from “Fargo.”

But I digress.

This being a movie set in the pre-war era, we know everything will be settled with fisticuffs in a nightclub against a background of hot jazz.

Pettigrew’s main fear is her new-found friends will discover her frumpy, street urchin past, despite the fact that she has made little effort to hide this. The inevitable conclusion is reached when the secret does come out and everything ends happily for the characters who deserve it, Pettigrew included.

But as she walks off with Caesar, I mean the lingerie designer, I’m left to wonder, did the title just refer to the event’s just shown to us or is there something more sinister ahead.

When I told my wife this, she said I need a new hobby.

“The Orphanage” proves a DIY clown mask is never a good idea

The best horror movies exploit the unfamiliar. I’m not sure how Spanish audiences first received this “The Orphanage,” but the fact that it’s in another language seems to make it more real. Same with older scary movies. Lon Chaney’s makeup in the “Phantom of the Opera” may look comical in some lights, but there’s always that little voice that asks, ‘wait a minute, what if this guy was for real?’

This theme was explored (to slightly comical effect) in “Shadow of the Vampire,” which imagines the makers of 1929’s “Nosferatu” using an actual vampire in the lead role.

But this is the problem with most contemporary horror movies, they rely on loud noises or unnatural amounts of gore to spook the audience.

“The Orphanage” uses some of these tricks, but throw in a few shadows and ask the audience to fill in the gaps and you’ve something that will keep you awake at night that no amount if viscera could. In one scene, a ghost lies in bed next to the main character. She thinks she’s talking with her husband, but we know from one quick scene whom she’s really speaking to.

On the surface, “The Orphanage” is a standard scary-house movie. Protagonist Laura grew up in a seaside orphanage. Year’s later, she and her husband fix it up with the intention that their new home for disadvantaged children will replicate the happy childhood she has. What could happen?

When the couple’s adopted son and see-er of ghosts, Simon, goes missing, Laura begins to realize that her childhood was not as serene as she once thought.

A mysterious old woman appears at the door one day that piques Laura’s suspicion that something else might be wondering around her home. The woman provides the two of the movie’s good scares: one involving an empty shed in the middle of the night and the other involving a shattered jawbone.

It’s standard fare that if you have a kid in a horror movie, they will invariable color a picture of all the ghosts they see, one of which will always have a creepy bag on their head or be old. It also goes without saying that the bag head character will show up in the next scene to terrify the protagonist.

The film later tells us that the kid wearing the bag was horribly disfigured. What is never explained is why the mask is more unsettling than the face? It’s like the caretakers said to themselves, ‘OK, the kid looks scary as it is, but if we really want to give the other orphans nightmares, let’s draw a clown face on the bag. Kids like clowns right?’

When Simon seems to vanish in a cave near the ocean where the first ghost was encountered, Laura spends the next few months consulting police psychologists and ghost hunters to try to find her missing son. When none of these fails to produce Simon, we get the surefire way to solve any horror movie: the heroine must unravel the mystery alone, in the house, at night.

The film was produced by Guillermo del Toro, himself skilled at building tension on a shoestring budget. It’s good marketing to play up his connection to the film to imply to the audience (wife included) that they’re getting a horror/morality tale in the vein of “Pan’s Labyrinth” or “The Devil’s Backbone.”

When we first saw a trailer for this movie, del Toro’s name flashed on screen and my wife remarked, “he’s such a good director.” I told her he was just a producer and that someone else had shot the movie, at which point she uttered a disappointed, “oh.”

Therefore I was surprised that she brought it home one day. She usually has an aversion to all things horror, but I’m sure the del Toro connection was the deciding factor in giving this movie a try.

The movie was effective enough at building suspense. Despite its sub-two-hour running time, my wife insisted we watch this in two parts, half in the evening and the other half in the comforting morning daylight.

I’m sure the filmmaker intended the movie to be seen under limited light. Scenes that would’ve provided a jolt at 10 p.m. lost their punch at 10 a.m.

A scary movie without darkness is like a romantic comedy without a happy ending.

“My Life In Ruins” is my big fat Greek tragedy

Mention Greece to the movie-going public and they’ll think of John Travolta. Mention it again, saying “No, stupid, the country. Grease is spelled with an A.” After they finish punching you, three things will pop into their heads as they walk away: that old building with the columns, that funny flat bread, and “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”

Nothing says “hey, you liked that Greek wedding movie starring Nia Vardalos, maybe you’ll like this Greek vacation movie with Nia Vardalos” like “My Life in Ruins,” which, if you read the first part of this sentence, is about a vacation in Greece.

Here, Georgia/Nia Vardalos is an American bus tour guide in who is so dully perceived by the tourists she guides that she’s about to be fired. Transfer this success rate to another profession (say, brain surgeon) and you see how much sympathy this generates. In moviedom, there is a fine line between being in a job you hate and being in a job you’re terrible at. In the much better “My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” Vardalos seems very capable at her humdrum travel agency job where she book trips to (wait for it) Greece.

…And here she’s a travel guide in Greece. Same movie universe or is that the fanboy inside talking?

In any case, Vardalos seems to have taken a while before heading back to the Greek well, especially if you consider the string of flops she had. But thanks to her appearance in that slightly more successful Greek movie, “My Life In Ruins” will likely become part two of a Vardalos trilogy; finished only when they find a another Mexican-American to star in a Zorba The Greek remake. I have a feeling her non-Greek-centric movies will be viewed by film historians the same way literature professors see Aeschylus’ lost plays. (Strangely, “Prometheus and the Tour Bus” is one of these “missing” works.)

Since “My Life In Ruins” (it’s a pun get it? get it?) is geared towards a mass audience, we rely on handy stereotypes to get characters’ motivations established quickly. Are there Australians on the bus? Then they better have beer in their hands in every scene. British? They better be an old and fussy couple. This method of generalizing is acceptable in a movie like this, largely because it is unlikely any Australians or Britons will see it because they are too busy drinking and fussing.

What follows is the standard These-People-Who-I’m-Repulsed-With-End-Up-Redeeming-Me approach. What I don’t get is, this formula would be greatly improved by the presence of a Cyclops or two. Certainly it would add to the drama if Polyphemus picked off a crusty Greek tourist. But this, along with the Spartan diaper from “300” that Richard Dreyfus was supposed to wear was probably chopped out in post-production.

No doubt the one thing people will take away from “My Life in Ruins” is the name of the hunky Greek bus driver and love interest Poupi Kaka. Yes, that’s his name and yes, this joke gets the biggest giggle in the whole movie. The Kaka name sets up for another equally middle school larf concerning Poupi’s nephew (hint: it’s ain’t Kostos).

“He’s Just Not That Into You,” wherein “you” has been substituted for “this movie”

What do “Love Actually” and “He’s Just Not That Into You” have in common? They both contain interlocking stories about falling in love, but only one contains characters you’d actually want to meet.

Borrowing the mega-romance model (i.e. one where more than two sets of characters fall in love), “Into You” aims depict a series of condensed chick-flick romances, despite being based on a book about why you stink at dating. The perfect romantic comedy!

While “He’s Just Not That Into You” is unquestionably about romance, a very small subplot seems to suggest that infidelity is more permissible than the occasional cigarette.

In the 1990 Arthur C. Clarke book “The Ghost from the Grand Banks,” one of the characters works at a job that meticulously erases any reference to tobacco use in films like “Casablanca.” Now it appears this view of the near future is not far away.

There was once a time when the main character lighting up was the essence of cool. Imagine Bogie or James Dean without their iconic cigarettes. Even Sherlock Holmes’ character was all the more developed by his ever-present pipe and occasional cocaine habit. But see a character now enjoying America’s first cash crop and you know he must be up to something.

Here, a character in a loveless relationship sleeps with Scarlett Johannsen. Granted, the guy’s a bastard, but hey, since he smokes he must be evil too.

This trend isn’t restricted to chick flicks. In “Star Wars: Attack of the Clones,” Obi-Wan Kenobi sends a would-be drug dealer home to “rethink his life.” Had “Empire Strikes Back” back been made today, Luke would’ve been tempted by the Dark Side with a pack of Marlboroughs.

But back to the promiscuity.

The point “Into You” seems to make is that love isn’t enough unless it’s on your terms.

The Live-In Couple – I know you are devoted and you love me, but I’m leaving unless you marry me.

The Unlucky Girl – I’ve decided I love you and I won’t leave you alone until you think so too.

The Just Friends – I am devoted to you and love you, but if you don’t I’ll start dating Drew Barrymore.

The Home Wrecker – I love you, but only when you’re married to someone else.

The Rocky Marriage – Despite cheating on me I still love you, but I’m leaving if you keep smoking.

Let me save everyone 2 hours and 12 minutes of their time. “He’s Just Not That Into You” the book: no means no. “He’s Just Not That Into You” the movie: no means yes.

After all, how can almost all the character send up happy at the end when the source material is about coping with romantic rejection. Say what you want about that other Jennifer Aniston movie “The Breakup,” at least it told you what you were getting.

As most end up together in the end, the title the title more likely refers to someone telling the movie what he male half of the audience thought. Oh yes, and if you want to be in a happy relationship, don’t smoke.

‘Memoirs of a Geisha’ could’ve used more robots

Entertainer. Companion. Confidant. Courtesan. Prostitute.

Quick quiz: If I mention the word “Geisha,” which of the above words pop into the mind first?

The makers of “Memoirs of a Geisha” would wish that you ignore the sex part of the job as it is only briefly touched on in the movie. No, these geisha are not sex slaves, but entertainment slaves. Big difference. Though, I guess that’s why “Memoirs of a Tramp” and “Syphilis: The Movie” didn’t quite have the image that producers wanted to convey.

Since most of the audience probably aren’t well-read on the geisha subject, most of their knowledge probably comes from a similarly titled book. We’ll have to assume that the movie presents things factually, like a documentary, but interesting. As the movie taught us, women don’t attend geisha school as they are captured, enslaved and sent to it or your parents are hard up for yen and the way to make ends meet is to sell you into indentured servitude. Oh, and I also learned if you’re the headmistress, the proper way to correct your students when they make a mistake is to shout at them in a booming voice “You are GEEEIIII-SHAAAA.” It doesn’t count unless the second syllable is drawn out as long as possible.

We see the apprentice geisha from childhood, through battles with geisha rivals, and her attempts to court a powerful, but kind man who she has known since childhood. That man, called the Chairman, played by Ken Watanabe, ironically one of the few Japanese actors playing a major role. What exactly he is a Chairman of is not explained, but I suspect it has something to do with wearing a top hat. It’s another unwritten movie rule that you cannot be a chairman of anything unless you wear a top hat at least once. Three of the principal actresses are of Chinese decent, and while this bothered me at first, I realize that you need recognizable faces if you’re going to make a period movie that has a shot at an Academy Award.

The movie, like any good period epic, unfolds across a number of era, including the Second World War. In another unwritten movie rule, if you are going to show World War II, you must include a shot of planes flying overhead with the characters looking up at them. Look, it’s in every movie.

During this time, the main character befriends an American colonel that looks suspiciously like the Buffalo Bill serial killer in “Silence of the Lambs.” Probably what they teach in geisha school is not to be a coat, much less take them, but I digress. Buried somewhere is a more compelling movie along those lines. I’m sure the makers of a movie called “Robo-Geisha” felt the same way.

Movies based on a popular book like this one often run into a trap then they make the jump from the page. No doubt “Geisha” the book is layered with rich, developed, characters. But the makers of “Geisha” the movie took extraordinary care in duplicating the look and feel of lat 19th, early 20th century Japan. Certainly they succeed, the movie is nice to look at, but what separates this from other movies like it that tend to do well during Oscar season is having that compelling story and interesting characters.

Having never read the book, it would be a bit pretentious, if accurate, to say that it is no replacement for the movie. Though the book probably leaves out the long annunciations of the subject, it’s hard to imagine any sort of words conjuring the sequence in the movie where the geisha must do their well-choreographed performance. Then again, I’m sure “Robo-Geisha” has a similar scene, too.