Push: Based on the novel by Sapphire
USA (2008)
Director: Lee Daniels
Starring: Gabourey Sidibe, Paula Patton, Mo’Nique, Mariah Carey, Sherri Shepherd, Lenny Kravitz
Capsule review by: Charlie Prince

Already a well known novel, Push has now been brought to the screen in magnificent fashion by director Lee Daniels. The film’s power is thanks largely to the talented actress Gabourey Sidibe, who plays the victimized, morbidly-obese Precious Jones. As the film came to a close, it was obvious that Push had captured the Sundance audience’s rapt attention this past Tuesday night at the Eccles Theater — so much so that when the film ended, the audience didn’t ask questions during the Q&A so much as shout out praise about how much they loved the film.

With great performances, solid direction and a powerful script, the only thing holding this film back is that it is extremely depressing. With father-daughter rape, HIV+ victims, horrible emotional and other physical abuse and much more, there’s not much in here to cheer up the audience. The director clearly anticipated this reaction, and tried to shape the audience’s opinion in a brief introduction to the film. While acknowledging that the film has the capacity to seem “dark”, Daniels said that throughout the film we see the star, Gabourney Sidibe, laughing at her problems as she confronts them throughout the film, and he encouraged us in the audience to recognize this and laugh along with her.

Nice try buddy, but no dice. Ain’t nobody laughing at the problems that are presented in this film. Without taking anything away from the artistic value of the film, the inevitable commercial reality of filmmaking must admit that this is a heavy film to watch, not unlike the Pierce Brosnan and Susan Sarandon-starring film The Greatest, which played earlier in the week. Despite Daniels’ warning, as the film ended I heard several jokes in the seats around me asking “So, how you feeling, pretty upbeat?”

The underlying subject matter is incredible, for those who aren’t familiar with the book. Sidibe plays a young women caught in a terrible, terrible situation. Living at home with a mother who lives off of television and gaming the welfare system, Precious can do nothing right in her mother’s eyes. Her mother blames Precious for ruining her romantic relationships, and resents it when Precious accomplishes anything (presumably a threat to her mother’s lack of accomplishments in life).

For example, when someone from her school comes to the house to talk with Precious and her mother, the mother only sees this as a potential threat to her welfare checks. She threatens that if Precious doesn’t succeed in getting the school official away from their door, she’ll beat the crap out of her (not an idle threat — we see that she beats her daughter regularly). Precious succeeds in making the school official leave, but the very fact that Precious has expressed any interest in school sets her mother into a violent rage. This is only one of many examples of the constant sea of emotional and physical abuse that Precious finds herself in.

I don’t want to give away any more of the plot, but the army of forces lined up against Precious, compared to the handful of forces working in her favor makes for a gripping thriller. Will she succumb to her mother’s insistence that she can’t learn anything and that nobody will ever care for her? Or will she break free from an apparent cyclical nightmare? In the process, many insights are possible both in terms of empathizing with people in Precious’ unenviable position, and generally regarding how societal and governmental forces succeed and fail in resolving such problems.

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Mystery Team
USA (2008)
Director: Dan Eckman
Starring: Donald Glover, DC Pierson, Dominic Dierkes, Aubrey Plaza, Bobby Moynihan, Matt Walsh
Capsule review by: Charlie Prince

I just don’t understand how these movies get into Sundance. A few people in the audience seemed to enjoy Mystery Team, but I thought it was terrible. To give you an idea, at least half of the audience left mid-movie at the screening that I attended on Tuesday. Personally, I always stick it out and watch movies to the end, but boy was I questioning that rule today.

Real quick, Mystery Team is a tale of three high school seniors who still act like they are 8 years old, in large part because that’s when they founded a kiddie detective agency that they call the “mystery team”. The mystery team would seek out “detective” assignments from whoever would take them seriously, with assignments as innocuous as resolving hopscotch infractions, or determining who stuck their finger in someone’s pie.

Although it was amusing when they were kids, the charm has long worn off for the rest of the town (and most of us in the audience). They are of course the laughing-stock of the school and nobody respects them, though they can’t seem to figure out why their old antics no longer work to make them “cool”. When a little girl asks them to find out who killed her parents the night before, they relish the opportunity to prove that they are “real” detectives by solving this significantly more challenging case.

Sounds like a (bad) kids movie, right? Since it is barely “ha ha” funny to an adult audience, you would think their only hope would be to appeal as a really silly kids/family movie. But no, there is nudity, F-bombs galore and more than enough violence to lose out on any appeal as a family movie. This dynamic does create some comedy, where you have essentially the equivalent of a Mickey Mouse club trio being cursed out by even younger kids as losers. Our detective trio is so developmentally clueless, they have no idea how to cope with the people around them, especially the leader of the trio as he makes his first effort to woo a girl.

Anyways, you get the idea. It’s too Disney to appeal to adults, too obscene to appeal to kids, and I at least found the comedy to be just awful. For example, one running joke throughout the film is that the dopey trio go into “disguise” to gain someone’s confidence to get information or get access to a building. In one scene, determined to get into a key building towards the end of the film, the star shows up in a cartoonish mariachi outfit, and announces to the security guard that he is the “Mexican plumber”. Great joke, huh? [Cue crickets] I could give many other examples, but it’s not worth the effort. It’s not funny, and it’s not worth your time.