Ms. Deschanel Sole Success in Failure to Launch

Halfway through the 2006 movie Failure to Launch, Zooey Deschanel had a scene in this movie where she was walking around in a department store at which point she casually picked up the entire movie and placed it in her pocket. Not that was a whole lot of movie to steal at that point. The plot was boring, the characters -- apart from Ms. Deschanel's, of course -- were less than charming and it became blatantly obvious that even someone as attractive as Sarah Jessica Parker couldn't carry a romcom in which neither half of the main romantic couple seemed all that interesting. Pretty soon I stopped wishing for her to succeed and instead chose to spend my time waiting for Ms. Deschanel to return.

Not that Ms. Deschanel didn't have her share of bad material to contend with -- especially toward the end when the script kept expecting her to do Moe Howard imitations. But she did have her moments and unlike Ms. Parker, I actually wanted to see more of her character even though the movie was not about her (a fact made obvious by the fact that she was not pictured on the above movie poster). Indeed, Ms. Deschanel was the sole reason that Failure to Launch did not leave a bad taste in my mouth. Too bad for her that her TV series New Girl was never all that funny. For a while there, Ms. Deschanel had a lot of potential and for all I know, she might still have.

Movie Song of the Week: "Baby, It's Cold Outside"

The one scene from Elf that I really like. And even then my like has more to do with Ms. Deschanel's vocals than anything else.

Death Be Not Loud

Oh, those wacky Latinos and their crazy funeral traditions involving respect for the dead. Don't they realize that the true purpose of funerals is for therapy and that any other consideration is just plain silly and old-fashioned? At least that is the way some British and Anglo-Americans see it. And are not their viewpoints the only viewpoints that are really worth taking seriously?

At least that is the impression I got from two movies I saw recently: 2004's Eulogy and 2007's Death at a Funeral. Both were critically acclaimed comedies that were supposedly to be great -- and both were at best just okay.

Of the two, I liked Eulogy best. Granted, a lot of that was because of actress Zooey Deschanel who has the ability to make even the most modest movie she is in seem more entertaining than it should. But she also has a good cast to back her up. Hank Azaria plays her father Daniel, Piper Laurie plays her grandmother Charlotte, Debra Winger and Kelly Preston play her aunts Alice and Lucy and Glenne Headly plays a wacky nurse named Samantha. Former TV star Ray Romano is also in it as Uncle Skip but the less said about him, the better.

Toward the beginning of the film, Ms. Deschanel's character, Kate Collins, is informed that her grandfather has passed away. Her grandmother assigns her to write an eulogy but Kate does not quite know what to say. She tries to quiz her father, her uncle and her two aunts about the man who was their father but what she gets is of little if any help. Even the local pastor does not seem to know the deceased that well. As you might guess, there proves to be a reason for that.

The movie generally tries to get humor out of a number of family secrets. For example, Uncle Skip still screams for his late father's attention and has two boys who are obsessed with sex and very much into immature practical jokes. Aunt Lucy still fights with her older sister Alice over her open lesbianism and the fact that she brought her live-in partner Judy (played by Famke Janssen) with her for the funeral. Daniel mourns more for his lost career as a child star than he does his late father and supports himself with bit parts in pornographic movies. Kate's mother is dead but still manages to have an embarrassing secret. Aunt Alice seems to have the perfect family -- one that talks way less than she does -- but she too has her secrets...

At first, I suspected that this movie was one of those films that critics love for striking all the right liberal notes without really saying anything new or challenging. The type of movie that would be quite shocking to my grandmother's generation but seems almost old hat to the more liberal members of my own.

But it proved to have a few good moments -- most of them starring Ms. Deschanel, who does a good job of playing straight woman to the other characters. She does not have the showiest part in the movie but she does get to play the one character who is closest to being a recognizable human being.

The other characters have their moments too. For example, I liked Alice's conversation with Lucy about the hopes she had for her baby sister, the scene in which Skip's sons acknowledged his affection but noted that words were not necessary, and the scene in which Charlotte presented Judy with some of her old wardrobe. In other words, the movie worked best when it remembered that its characters were part of a family and not characters in some zany sitcom.

As for Death at a Funeral, that film had a similar formula. A family patriarch dies, all sorts of embarrassing secrets come out and every other family member decides to use the occasion as an impromptu therapy session. The movie did improve toward the end when a lead character got the chance to give an genuinely moving eulogy. But it still seemed like much ado about nothing, if not a self-congratulatory excuse to make movie-goers happy that “at least their family was not like that.”

Oh, well. A lot of my family's behavior around the time of my father's death in 2003 would have seemed strange to outsiders too. Then again we did manage to restrain ourselves from making public spectacles of ourselves and we bent over backwards to work out every disagreement we had over my father's estate in a peaceful manner. Plus -- and I know this might sound strange to some non-Hispanics -- we actually showed signs of missing and mourning our late father. I know that is not the type of stuff that makes for a particularly entertaining movie but then I am not quite convinced that a lot of the antics that took place in Eulogy and Death at a Funeral were all that entertaining either. Perhaps it is one of those Latino things that others would not understand.