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PRIDE (PG) A new year means a slew
of new inspirational sports flicks. In
Pride. 2007's first piece of reality-
based sports memorabilia, Jim Ellis
(Terrence Howard) starts a swim team
for the troubled teens of Philadelphia
that floats to the top of the national
pool. I'd see the mesmerizing Howard
act in anything, and Bernie Mac's sup
port can be golden. But four credited
screenwriters is not a good sign. With
Kimberiy Elise and Diana Ross' son,
Evan. Opens Friday (Carmike)
THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS
(PG-13) Devoted father and salesman
Chris Gardner (Will Smith) finds him
self homeless due to bad investments
and stupid decisions But with pluck,
moxie and a little luck, he lands on his
feet after the greedy rich men of Dean
Witter graciously offer Chris a job after
he makes them oodles of money during
an unpaid internship. The problem with
the well-made Happyness is. if you're
not careful, you’ll swallow the shit it's
shoveling. (Georgia Square 5)
REIGN OVER ME (R) Adam Sandler
looks again for critical success in the
new film from Mike Binder (The Upside
of Anger). Sandler is Charlie Fineman,
who lost his family in 9/11; Don
Cheadle is Charlie’s college roommate,
Alan Johnson, a successful dentist,
who randomly runs into his despeiately
disconnected old friend on a New
York street corner. The two rekindle a
friendship they both badly need With
Jada Pinkett Smith and Liv Tyler. Opens
Friday (Call Theaters)
RENO 911!: MIAMI (R) I am pleased
to announce Reno 91U: Miami is
Police Academy for a new millennium,
and every thousand years, we need a
new Police Academy. Plus, Paul Rudd's
hideous Scarface impersonation is
almost as good as Michael Winslows
mouth effects. Sketch comedy is
always hit-or-miss, but these cops are
sharpshooters. Starts Friday (Highway
17 Theatres)
< SHOOTER (R) Shooter owns some
of the spring’s hottest buzz. Directed
by Training Days Antoine Fuqua.
Shooter stars Mark Wahlberg as exiled
marksman Bob Lee Swagger, who is
framed for the attempted assassination
of the president. Expect lots of double
crosses, explosions and costar Danny
Glover seen through crosshairs. Opens
Friday (Carmike)
SCREAMING QUEENS: THE RIOTS
AT COMPTON’S CAFETERIA (NR)
2005. Screaming Queens documents
the 1966 struggle of gay street hus
tlers and transgender women against
police harassment in San Francisco's
Tenderloin district. At Compton’s, a
cup of coffee tossed at a police officer
spar'.ed the modern militant movement
for transgender rights. Sponsored by
the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender
(LGBT) Resource Center. Shows
Wednesday. 3/28 (UGA SLC150)
STOMP THE YARD (PG-13) Stomp
the Yard isn’t half-bad. It follows DJ
(Columbus Short) from underground
street dancing in L A. to the beautiful
campuses of the Atlanta University
Center. A good c!d competition movie
but the choreography's fly and the sur
rounding melodrama not out of step.
(Georgia Square 5)
STRANGER INSIDE (NR) 2001
Some mother-daughter reunions are
harder than others, but one that takes
place within the confines of a cor
rectional facility might take the cake
for toughest. As Treasure and Brownie,
Yolonda Ross and Davenia McFadden
give this realistic look into a women's
prison its grit. Stranger Inside re
ceived numerous accolades from film
festivals, gay and straight, across the
nation Followed by a discussion led
by Dr Chris Cuomo Part of Women's
History Month Shows Tuesday, 3/27
(UGA SLC 248)
TMNT (PG) The PG rating doused
any hopes this cool-looking CGI
adventure would be a return to the
Turtles' Eastman & Laird origins, and
word is writer-director Kevin Munroe
simply forgets Teenage Mutant Ninja
Turtles ///ever existed. Featuring the
voices of Sarah Michelle Gellar, Kevin
Smith. Patrick Stewart and Laurence
Fishburne Opens Friday (Carmike)
THE ULTIMATE GIFT (PG) No one
should have to pay to watch something
you should get gratis on PAX. A trust
fund baby (Drew Fuller) inherits 12
Herculean tasks, or “gifts" from his
wealthy grandfather (James Garner).
Luckily for Jason, these "gifts" enable
him to discover whether or nof money
will truly make him happy. With Abigail
Breslin. Ends Thursday (Carmike)
WILD HOGS (PG-13) Wild Hogs
is more premise than movie. Four
middle-aged suburban eunuchs played
by John Travolta, Tim Allen, Martin
Lawrence and William H. Macy try to
regain their masculinity by hitting the
open road on their bikes. Warning.
Most of the jokes are less funny than
they may appear After the movie, you'll
be picking sexual innuendoes—hetero
and homo—out of your teeth like so
many bugs. Travolta slathers on his
enchanting old musk, but mustering
up any sympathy for this not-so-wild
bunch of grown men was impos
sible. This flick's just coasting on
the fumes of its stars’ fading charms
(Beechwood, Carmike)
ZODIAC (R) Talented filmmaker
David Fincher finally releases his
sixth feature, an overdue, overlong
thriller about the Zodiac, a serial killer
who threatened San Francisco in the
1960s and 1970s. Zodiac pursues
the parallel investigations of political
cartoonist Robert Graysmith (Jake
Gyllenhaal) and the police, led by
Inspector David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo).
A refreshing take on the serial killer
thriller (Beechwood); Ends Thursday
(Carmike)
Drew Wheeler
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FLAWED ROCK
I THINK I LOVE MY WIFE (R) What happened
to Chris Rock? Arguably (but I'm not willing
to argue this point for very long) the greatest
stand-up comic of his generation, Rock strung
together a series of riotously funny, socially bril
liant, caustically acerbic HBO specials, "Bring the
Pain" and "Bigger and Blacker," in the '90s. His
rants on race, sex, relationships and politics were
groundbreaking even in our post-Richard Pryor
world, and Rock ably filled the void left by Eddie
Murphy s ascent into the box office stratosphere.
(Can you even imagine the massively egotistical
Murphy doing stand up now? "Delirious" seems
like it's millennia, not a quarter of a century,
old.)
Then, like Murphy, Rock found superstardom
or at least a fraction of it. A slew of support
ing parts in the painfully funny (Dogma, Nurse
Betty), the painfully overextended (Lethal
Weapon 4), and the just plain painful (Sgt Bilko,
Beverly Hilb Ninja, Doctor Dolittle) followed.
Now Rock's a star, able to focus on honing his
greatest gift—a razor-sharp understanding of
the affairs between men and women, whites and
blacks, rich and poor—but he's done nothing of
the sort. His last HBO special, "Never Scared,"
was tired and spottily humorous at best, pos
sibly because he was spending too much time
writing and starring in Down to Earth, the Weitz
Brothers' ill-conceived remake of the Warren
Beatty vehicle Heaven Can Wait (itself a remake
of Here Comes Mr. Jordan), and writing, directing
and starring in Head of State, quite possibly the
most disappointing political comedy I've ever
had the misfortune to anticipate. Rock's trade
mark trenchancy (his rant on the unfeasibility of
a black vice-president was a highlight of "Bigger
and Blacker") was replaced by easy, juvenile
jokes more appropriate (and funnier) in Friday.
The closest he came to true political satire c.i
the level of Bulworth (an underrated Beatty gem)
or Wag the Dog (David Mamet, Barry Levinson,
Dustin Hoffman, Robert De Niro,and Willie Nelson
at their finest) was the mass exodus of white
Californians rushing out to vote when they heard
Rock's Mays Gilliam was winning the presidential
election.
Now back to my opening query. What did hap
pen to Chris Rock? He's an obviously talented
comedian and a decidedly smart man with an eye
for life's little details as sharp as Jerry Seinfeld's
and as edgy as Richard Pryor's. The fault with
Rock may lie less within himself and mere with
the medium he has chosen. Where did Seinfeld
get his groove back? He got it on television.
Why? He's not a very good actor, and neither is
Rock. His eyes give him away throughout his
new feature, / Think I Love My Wife. No matter
what emotion he is meant to be conveying to
hardworking wife Brenda (Gina Torres, Serenity),
his eyes betray a mirthful, mischievous, "I'm just
acting" gleam much like Seinfeld's ever-present
smirk. Murphy is a movie star—has been ever
since the massively popular and entertaining
Beverly Hilb Cop—and an actor (petulant reac
tion or not, Murphy deserved this year's Academy
Award). The same accusation can be made of
Pryor, a one-of-a-kind comedic virtuoso. Rock
may be a better stand-up comic than Murphy
and rank just behind Pryor, but he will never be
an actor nor a writer nor a director. He's tried
again and again and displays little improvement
in I Think I Love My Wfe. Considering the small-
screen success of "Everybody Hates Chris" and
his first two HBO specials, Rock should rethink
his present career path.
Rock's big screen failings provide all the
necessary reasons to tut-tut his decision to
remake French filmmaker Eric Rohmer's Chloe in
the Afternoon, the last of his Six Moral Tales,
as a misogynistic, Woody Allenesque drama of
comedic proportions. In J Think I Love My Wife,
Rock plays Richard Cooper, an investment banker
bored with his wife. When the gorgeous, sexy,
literally smoking Nikki Tru (Kerry Washington,
The Last King of Scotland) begins dropping by
Richard's office for daily lunches ; he starts a
sexless affair that will force him to choose what
he really wants from his life, the exciting un
predictability of a Nikki or the safety of Brenda.
Rock the writer shows a smidgen of maturity
with I Think I Love My Wife, but he stiU relies on
pitiful racial commentary that pales next to his
stand-up. Unlike his idol, Allen, who elevated
lewish jokes to a socially skewering art form.
Rock conjures up musty depictions of African-
Americans as incapable of monogamy. As a direc
tor, he shows a visual restraint missing from his
first effort. Still, unlike Kevin Smith, a notorious
underdirector who lets his juvenilely mature, ear-
burningly profane, brilliantly pop cultural, blis
teringly funny words do the talking, Rock fails to
develop a script that can make up for the lack of
an interesting visual dimension. (The Spike Lee-
inspired floating breakdown appears out-of-place
in Rock's drab film.) He spends far too much time
on dated pop zingers about Prince and Michael
Jackson; repetition of an unfunny gag regarding
elevator profanity; and a horridly cliched Viagra
mishap. So excited to have an R-rating, Rock
over-deploys the f-bombs. His distastefully foul-
mouthed characters need to wash their mouths
out with soap. Maybe then they could deal with
their marital issues like adults and start having
sex again. Rock may think he loves his wife, but
I know I don't like his Him.
Drew Wheeler
Chris Rock, Kerry Washington and Gina Torres
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MARCH 21,2007 • FLAGPOLE.COM 15