ifc films
Showalter's nice guy finishes first, even if The Baxter doesn't.
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The Baxter
Runs Fri., Sept. 16–Thurs., Sept. 22, at Varsity
OK already, I take back everything I said about Wedding Crashers. A sit in search of the com, The Baxter confuses the execution of a joke with its mere suggestion. As writer/director/star Michael Showalter's overgrown preppie Elliot says, "Compromise is the key to success." Not this time, fella. In voice-over, Elliot also explains how a "Baxter" is the nice guy/loser who typically gets dumped at the altar when a better option comes along. That option is dashing Bradley (Paul Theroux), who swoops down to nab Caroline (Elizabeth Banks), even if he hasn't quite narrowed down his choice of careers between soccer and medicine. But no matter, he's more than a match for über-dweeb Elliot, a CPA who wears a tweed cap and reads the dictionary for fun—just like that cute new temp in his office, Cecil (Michelle Williams).
At this point, were Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn on hand to rudely crash The Baxter, stealing Banks and Williams away in the process, the movie might've been bearable. But Showalter just keeps grinding away, sharpening his pencil, polishing his apple, intent on his notion that a movie about the other guy—Ralph Bellamy in His Girl Friday, Bill Pullman in Sleepless in Seattle—is subversive and hilarious. It's the kind of premise without a punch line that Showalter and his Stella TV cohorts could maybe sustain in a sketch for a few minutes, by which time you're grateful for the Mentos commercial that follows.
Slow and laughless, poorly photographed and lit, and with a mincing Peter Dinklage role that's borderline offensive, The Baxter may actually drive down real-estate prices in Brooklyn, where it's mostly set. Elliot says of himself that he's "the kind of guy you settle for." Not so the movie. (PG-13) BRIAN MILLER
Just Like Heaven
Opens Fri., Sept. 16, at Pacific Place and others
This paint-by-numbers romantic fantasia by Mark Waters (Mean Girls) is ostensibly about finding balance in life, which is much easier, it seems, once you've had a near-death experience. (Who knew?) Following a head-on collision with a tractor trailer, workaholic doctor Elizabeth (Reese Witherspoon) lies comatose in the very San Francisco hospital where she once worked. Her spirit, however, is free to wander the Earth, though it prefers chiding landscape architect David (Mark Ruffalo), who's rented her old apartment, about putting cups down on her mahogany coffee table without coasters. Can these two crazy kids restore Elizabeth's senseless body to perky, fashionable life? More important: Can they find love in a deeply unspiritual age?
It's not a bad premise, but Heaven misplays it in almost every conceivable way. The movie is surprisingly unfun, a businesslike genre exercise whose only hope for salvation is one clever bit of casting. Jon Heder, better known to the world as Napoleon Dynamite, appears all too briefly as a slacker psychic, the Whoopi Goldberg to Ruffalo's Demi Moore. Like every other member of the cast, Heder does and says precisely what's needed in order to advance the plot, yet he's so inessential to it that he actually appears to be having fun. Ruffalo and Witherspoon, on the other hand, spend most of the picture mugging, pouting, and generally overacting, though he's better at reining in the script's slapstick nonsense than she is. About 20 minutes in, however, his charms aren't enough, and you may find yourself wishing, as I was, that she'd just walk toward the goddamn light, already. (PG-13) NEAL SCHINDLER
Lord of War
Opens Fri., Sept. 16, at Pacific Place and others
If you walk out of Lord of War right after the opening sequence, you won't miss anything half as good. It's a bravura biography of a bullet, snappily photographed from its birth in the clattering factory to its destiny, smashing through the forehead of a startled young man in Africa, depicted from the bullet's point of view. The following biography of an arms dealer, Ukrainian immigrant Yuri (Nicolas Cage), is nowhere near as good: Its story line is like a bullet that wanders pokily around in circles, checking out various scenarios without finding its target. The chronic, wearily sardonic voice-over narration by Cage is a confession of narrative incompetence, the hiccupping script a disgrace.
And yet, you will miss some striking scenes if you do walk out. Cage's sleepy-eyed hipster shuffle is good for his conflicted character, sort of a combination of his action-movie numb strut and Leo DiCaprio's gleeful Catch Me If You Can dance. Cage and his kid brother (gorgeously ice-irised Jared Leto) make a mint hawking ammo and AK-47s, rising from their humble roots in Brooklyn's Little Odessa to challenge smooth, bespoke- suited elder dealer Ian Holm. Holm is simmeringly sinister and criminally underused. As the Keystone cop/Inspector Javert on Cage's trail, Ethan Hawke is criminally overused, forever arriving to bust him seconds after a big deal. It's all stylishly lensed and edited, mostly fun to watch scene by scene, but it illustrates the difference between speed and momentum.
Cage eventually graduates to the $32 billion heist of Ukraine's armory, for the benefit of African warlords. There are horribly irrelevant subplots involving Cage's courtship of his teenage crush (the flavorless dish Bridget Moynihan) and Leto's cocaine habit. His performance is like a coke buzz—a couple minutes' thrill followed by prolonged depression.
