We watched Wedding Crashers yesterday, and looking back Jeff had mentioned it positively lo those long Summer months ago, but nary a word since. I thought it was fine–a few fine laughs here and there, but less interesting than 40-Year-Old Virgin and far far less funny than Anchorman. (In fact, when Will Ferrell makes the inevitable cameo at Crashers‘ end, he made me laugh almost harder than the rest of the film. Which perhaps invites a bit of self- and world-categorizing about the kinds of people who find Anchorman‘s surreal silliness funnier than the more conventional romance-bound comedies cited above, but:)
But I digress: I want to return to a point about Vaughn that Jeff made: he is indeed a god.
Even in this film, he veers off-track into extravagant soliloquies of nonsense; it was illuminating to see V. V. alongside Christopher Walken, who can seemingly make even the flattest bit of necessary exposition strange and hilarious–Vaughn has a similar ability, ‘though his talent lies in extrapolation and exhaustive chatter rather than complete alienness.
So I recommend W.C. mostly for Vaughn’s performance, and I more keenly invite people to rent or return to Made, where Jon Favreau plays straight man and allows Vaughn to tear up the screen, reimagining his character from Swingers to highlight the narcissism, the misogyny, the stupidity. He’s fucking brilliant. (He is also, as Peter Falk puts it in the outtakes, a fucking hog. One small scene where Favreau and Vaughn visit with bossman Falk took take after take, and each time V.V. veers radically off-course, prompting either irritation from Falk or giggles from Favreau or both.) There is a scene at the end of the film where Favreau and V.V. carry on an argument around J.F.’s child, while making ‘art’ with her, in pig latin, …. I have tears in my eyes now, just thinking about it.
i am torn between liking and disliking vaughn. i grant him all the characteristics you describe, though i would add that what makes vaughn click is this sense of uneasiness that he seems to have with his own verbal felicity–he’s like the big, tall, handsome smart guy who seems to be always aware of the fact that he’s a nerd in a jock’s body. the reason i can’t decide to like him is that i think he would have bullied me in high school. but then i feel the same way about reynolds.
owen wilson’s persona on the other hand is so sweet and ingratiating in a genuinely warm kind of way. i’d like to see him play an utter slimeball a la aaron eckhart someday.
Wilson played a somewhat blank, yet still semi-affecting psychopath in a great little film called The Minus Man. His performance is muted–so that the folks around him (a good Janeane Garafolo, a strong Mercedes Ruehl, and the superlative Brian Cox) can really shine. The film is strong.
I agree, though–Wilson seems effortlessly likable, probably because he seems effortlessly to like everyone, which makes us feel good.
What I like about Vaughn is how aggressively unlikable he is in his films. When I saw Made, it seemed like a direct homage to Mikey and Nicky, where John Cassavetes goes out of his way to be as off-putting and discordant as humanly possible. That comedy of discomfort always appeals to me; in fact, I could very well see Vaughn handling an Eckhart-ian role. But with more talking.
i’ve seen the minus man (and liked it). even that film is premised partly on how drawn people are even to blank owen wilson.
i meant i’d like to see wilson play his persona against the grain more and take on eckhart-ian roles, not vaughn. do all that sweetness but turn out to be an utter creep.
just finished wedding crashers. good, genial fun–we watched the “uncorked” version, which i assume has more swearing and breasts than the theatrical version. yes, vaughn is funny, and so is ferrell in his cameo, but neither are the funniest things about the film. that prize goes to the woman who plays gloria, vaughn’s love interest.
We just saw Crashers. Here’s my three word review: Too Much Plot.
Interestingly, Vaughn also played a serial killer (with Janeane Garafolo as FBI) in Clay Pigeons. I can’t remember a damn thing about it or I’d compare it to Wilson’s performance in Minus Man which I can also barely remember. What I did find disturbing about that one was that I still found Owen Wilson hot in that movie. Yeah, next thing you know you’re going to find out Pete’s been hiding the bodies in the basement.
watched made last night. see, i found vaughn’s character in swingers to be narcisstic and annoying to begin with, but yes, it is quite a performance. favreau is good too, doing the slow burn for 90 minutes. the film doesn’t go all the way through to becoming the anti-swingers though: favreau’s character once again sentimentalized and vaughn, too, sketched affectionately despite the annoyingness. mike, that ceramic painting scene with the child is not at the end of the film, and while good isn’t as funny as you’re making it out to be–wipe those tears.
okay, the break-up, which we watched tonight, and which i did not expect to like as much as i did, has finally sold me on vaughn. he is very good. favreau is also in it in a small part and he is very good too. everyone in it is good actually (jason bateman also shines in a tiny role) with the sad exception of judy davis, one of my favorite actresses and someone whose disappearance from screen in recent years i’ve wondered about. here she plays a caricature and plays it like a caricature, and looks like she’s aged 20 years since i saw her last. best of all though is vincent d’onofrio disappearing into a small role as vaughn’s older square of a brother.
but yes, vaughn: shooting his mouth off as usual, all nervous energy and perfect delivery but also adding some vulnerability to the persona.
the film itself is not great–the first 45 minutes are very good and then it begins to drag–but i would recommend it as good timepass, as we used to say back in college.
Finally saw The Break-Up, about which I will say there is a great film buried in the situation and the many intriguing secondary characters, with a helluva interesting center in the assholish Vince V, but the film is wrecked for me completely by the tight sitcom-friendly constrictions of Jennifer Aniston’s performance. I’ll guess that maybe she can do something more complicated, but she seems here so flat and blank and generally “nice” that the potential for a War-of-the-Roses–Swingers mash-up are demolished. I liked the vulnerability, the real raw emotion that crept in around the seams of the great character acting by Vaughn, Bateman, D’Onofrio, some others–I just didn’t feel one blessed thing about her or her character, and the film smashed to a halt whenever she was central, and it lost much momentum when she shared screentime with anyone.
I think reynolds and Jennifer Aniston are headed for a break-up.
i just caught the last 30 minutes of the break-up on hbo and i liked them a lot, and am chagrined to see that in my initial review i said i liked the first half of the film. vaughn really is very good here, but i want to single out d’onofrio once again as vaughn’s older brother. he shows up in this brief scene at the end, an awkward moment where vaughn is trying to repair his relationship with his brother in the way that he was not able to with aniston. in just a few awkward shuffles and half gestures d’onofrio delineates not only his own character but an entire family history for vaughn’s characters inability to emotionally connect with anyone.
so, yes, vince, but a different one.