Toni Collette, who has had one of the most versatile acting careers that I can think of since her breakthrough film role in 1994's Muriel's Wedding, now reteams with the writer-director of that film, P.J. Hogan (also his breakout movie), on Mental.
Like Muriel, this new film focuses on a highly dysfunctional family and is set in Australia, where both Collette and Hogan hail from. Mental opens exclusively in Chicago this Friday, March 29, at the AMC Loews, 600 N. Michigan Ave., and is also available On Demand. Similar in tone and feeling to the darkly funny Muriel—although not quite as immediately winning—the movie is based on an incident from Hogan's own adolescence.
After his mother had a nervous breakdown, the 12-year-old Hogan arrived home one night to find himself confronted by a tough, no-nonsense babysitter—a female hitchhiker that his father, a local politician who hid his mother's breakdown out of embarrassment, had picked up on the way to work. The babysitter, who rolled her own cigarettes, had brought along a snarling dog and a hunting knife, and immediately took charge of Hogan and his equally rambunctious siblings. This improbable situation was trumped by what followed: the babysitter/drill sergeant brought order to the family and even stayed on after Hogan's mother returned.
That scenario is the ideal basis for a black comedy and Hogan uses it as a starting point for the movie, his first since 2009's intermittently funny and awfully familiar Confessions of a Shopaholic. That description also describes Mental, which opens with the mother (already close to her nervous breakdown) singing "The Sound of Music" in her backyard in full-on Julie Andrews mode to her aghast neighbors and her mortified daughters. The father (Anthony LaPaglia) has the mother put away and installs Collette's Shaz, the hitchhiker, to watch over his brood of five unruly daughters. (The eldest, who works at the local aquatic theme park and falls for a hunky lifeguard, is the stand-in for Hogan).
Shaz, a sort of modern-day Nanny McPhee, works her rough magic on the disintegrating family, brings mum back into the fold, takes revenge on the disapproving neighbors, gives her blessing to an unlikely lesbian romance and even gets dad to play ball. Plot developments—in the form of Trevor (Liev Schreiber), the sinister owner of the shark exhibit at the aquatic park—lead to a frenzied last act before Happily Ever After can be attained. Given all the last-minute complications that kinda work, the movie ironically pushes too hard at the outset to score laughs after its lovely opening sequence, and takes a long time to settle in.
Collette, who first heard Hogan's unlikely story when the two were working on Muriel, claimed rights to the part of Shaz (whose name and other characteristics have been changed) should he ever film it. She typically gives the role her all and, though the performance starts too high (taking its cues from Hogan's over-the-top scenario, no doubt)—a rarity for the multitalented Collette—she quickly finds the right balance and from that point on, as usual, this marvelously intuitive actor is a pleasure to watch. Although Mental comes off like a pale imitator of the greatly superior Muriel—due in part to its overfamiliarity, thanks to a spate of similarly themed Aussie black comedies in the ensuing years (Welcome to Woop Woop et al)—this reunion of the star from Oz and her director is worth the trip Down Under.
Oscar-nominated and -winning films
coming to home video:
In days of yore, Hollywood would get its Oscar-winning and -nominated films into theaters as soon as possible after the awards ceremony in order to multiply their box-office returns, realizing that millions of moviegoers were dying to at last see what all the fuss was about. Home video slowly changed all that and now the faster the award winners can be made available to the public, the better.
These days, many of the nominated films are released before the ceremony (as was the case with the suspenseful and entertaining Best Picture winner Argo and with the tremendous Skyfall, the latest James Bond movie). Joining those titles are the eye-popping Life of Pi, which brought Ang Lee his second directing Oscar; Lincoln, Steven Spielberg and Tony Kushner's enthralling history lesson (made all the more so with Daniel Day-Lewis's third Best Actor Oscar win in the title role); and the love-it-or-hate-it musical juggernaut Les Miserables with its Oscar-winning turn from Anne Hathaway as the luckless Fantine, who belts out the ubiquitous "I Dreamed a Dream." Zero Dark Thirty—the unflinching hunt for terrorist Osama bin Laden from Kathryn Bigelow, with an Oscar-nominated performance for Jessica Chastain—joins these releases. Although the movie is unnecessarily overlong, it still rates a strong recommendation, given its last suspenseful hour.
Also too long is Peter Jackson's three-hour-plus The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which got shut out of all three of the technical Oscars it was nominated for. Much easier to digest in the home theater (for obvious reasons) and not saddled with Jackson's ultra-high-definition ratio, the movie still seems to take a long time to get going. However, the leisurely pace at the outset is more than made up by the movie's fantastic visual panache, some great action/fantasy sequences, and the welcome return of Ian McKellen and Cate Blanchett among the newcomers to Middle Earth. Each of these movies is offered in deluxe, Blu-ray/DVD/digital download, multi-disc combos with a host of special features as additional incentives (including lengthy "making-of" featurettes, commentaries and more) on down to one-disc, bare-bones editions.
After luxuriating in all these carefully crafted pictures, a bit of counterprogramming, in the form of camp or plain old movie junk, might just be the ticket. Shout! Factory—with its release of the four-disc Mystery Science 3000: XXVI—is here to provide just such a breath of hilarious fresh air (thanks to the awful movies and the always hilarious onscreen commentary). The titles say it all in this latest compilation, culled from the archives of the beloved cult show dedicated to the worst that the movies have to offer: The Magic Sword, Alien from L.A., Danger!! Death Ray and my personal fave, the sci-fi "classic" The Mole People.
Film notes:
—Cinema Q III, the annual free Cultural Center LGBT film series, ends Wed., March 27, with a 6:30 p.m. 15th-anniversary screening (in the Claudia Cassidy Theater in the Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St.) of out director Bill Condon's Oscar-winning Gods & Monsters. Ian McKellen stars in an Academy Award-nominated performance as James Whale, the man who directed Frankenstein, its sequel and many other early classic Hollywood hits—and whose openly gay lifestyle contributed to his career downfall. Condon's film, based on the excellent novel of the same name, imagines Whale toward the end of his life in 1957, battling loneliness and increasing health challenges until a young, hunky groundskeeper (Brendan Fraser) agrees to sit for a portrait. Lynn Redgrave, also Oscar-nominated, plays his overprotective, eccentric housekeeper. Pride Films & Plays co-sponsors the screening. http://www.cityofchicago.org/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/cinema_q.html
—Audience members who relish dressing up in nun habits and Nazi uniforms won't have to wait until Thanksgiving for the annual Sing-A-Long Sound of Music at the Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave. The theater is bringing back the popular screening event—complete with costume contest, goodie bags and lyrics projected on the screen—on Saturday, March 30, at 2 p.m. The following day, Sunday, March 31, the sing-a-long concept continues with an Easter screening of 1971's scrumdillyicious Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory—again with pre-show costume contest, goodie bags and the prerequisite sing-a-long. www.musicboxtheatre.com
Check out my archived reviews at www.windycitymediagroup.com or www.knightatthemovies.com . Readers can leave feedback at the latter website.
