The Legend of Tarzan

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: David Yates/Starring: Alexander Skarsgard, Margot Robbie, Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz, Djimon Hounsou, Jim Broadbent and Ben Chaplain

If you're like me, you might be wondering why the world needs another Tarzan flick but after seeing director David Yates' The Legend of Tarzan I wondered: why does the world need another Tarzan flick? I still have yet to see versions superior to the Johnny Weismuller films though I kind of liked Christopher Lambert's Tarzan in the early 80s'. I think a 50 year moratorium on Tarzan films is in order.
I thought a fine cast might make for a fun time but no, not even Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz or Jim Broadbent could make this CGI snooz-er-roo watchable. Yes, it is a bore though maybe those who find the sight of a ripped Alexander Skarsgard a sight to ogle will get a charge out of watching Yates' pointless dud. I wish I could say Margot Robbie's comely form compensated me but her erotic potential was sadly neutralized. It's understandable. After-all, this is family entertainment but I can't recall a Jane ever looking (and sounding) so plain and un-erotic.

In order for the story to be relevant in the 21st century, the film is heavily politicized, as it rails against the evils of 19th century colonialism in Africa and pushes a subtle message about nature.

We learn in the beginning of the film about how Africa was being carved up by the European powers in the 1880s'. Congo was claimed by Belgium for its mineral wealth and diamonds but King Leopold discovered exploiting the country's resources to be a drain on his own country's coffers.

John Clayton (Alexander Skarsgard); who we come to know as Tarzan in a series of formative-year flashbacks, has since returned to England and been re-assimilated as a gentleman. Clayton is asked by King Leopold to lead an expedition into the Congo. Though his identity as Tarzan is unbeknownst to the general public, his American friend George Washington Williams (Samuel L. Jackson) is well aware of his alter-ego. Williams urges his reluctant friend to go. Joining him is wife Jane (Margot Robbie) and Williams himself. Throughout the film, we learn how Clayton's parents perished in an African jungle while their infant son was adopted by an ape. The film backtracks intermittently to show us Clayton/Tarzan at different periods in his life as he grows strong and ape-like in his former jungle home.

Meanwhile, King Leopold's unsavory envoy to the Congo; Leon Rom (Christoph Waltz) leads his own expedition into the country's heart to plunder its natural wealth. He and his troops are set upon by a tribe and its Chief; Mbonga (Djimon Hounsou), who are very aware of what Rom and his men are after. Rather than slaughtering the Europeans, the chief makes a deal: he will shower Rom with diamonds if he will capture Tarzan, who was responsible for Mbonga's son's death. Rom accepts Mbonga's offer and sets out to capture his prey.

As Tarzan reacquaints himself with his former arboreal life and home, he re-establishes his relationship with the animals and his environment while Williams keeps to his side and tries to keep up. Jane is ultimately captured to lure Tarzan into Rom's clutches when the envoy learns his target is conducting his own expedition.

As we might expect from any Tarzan film, the action scenes consist of swinging about the jungle, fighting Rom's soldiers and calling on his animal friends to help him in his battles. In a scene where our heroes are hopelessly outnumbered by Leopold's troops, a stampeding crush of wildebeest serve as Tarzan's army. We also expect a confrontation between Tarzan and his Mangani (great apes) brother, who proves to be the stronger during their brutal melee. True to Tarzan lore, Jane is a helpless captive who continually warns Rom about her husband's wrath. I expected a bad-ass, Jane-for-the-21st-century but no dice. The final confrontation between Rom and Tarzan is a ho-hum affair. We know the muscular jungle dude just can't lose.

I was actually looking forward to this movie because I thought Skarsgard might make a fascinating Tarzan. Skarsgard can be very interesting if given substantial material but in a role that demands him to look like a surfer-god, grunt occasionally and speak in flat diction, he registers as only slightly more real than the CGI animals. Waltz is a seasoned villain and always fun to have around while Jackson makes for an effective sidekick to Skarsgard, who so badly needs a comic personality to offset his forgivable woodenness. Like Robie's almost brainless depiction of Jane, Jim Broadbent is saddled with a ridiculous, bewildering voice that serves no dramatic purpose.

I found myself quite bored with the movie. It was a task staying awake; even in the most action-packed moments and I found I didn't give a damn what happened to Tarzan or Jane. Had they had their butts devoured by crocodiles or hippopotami, that would have been fine with me.

As with most mega-budget movies, the film comes off more as a product than an inspired action/thriller/romance. How a director can have almost unlimited access to visual effects and still induce drowsiness in a theater audience is mystifying. I guarantee you the early Weismuller iterations didn't have $180 million dollar budgets. They didn't need to.

I haven't seen any commercial tie-ins for The Legend of Tarzan, which is too bad. The movie itself would make an excellent commercial for a Tarzan-theme park in Orlando, if one should ever be conceived. But as a movie, it just seems endless.

Diary of a Teenage Girl

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Marielle Heller/Starring: Bel Powley, Kristen Wiig, Alexander Skarsgard, Christopher Meloni and Madeleine Waters

What may be the last teen film of the summer: Diary of a Teenage Girl opened this week at local theaters and I couldn't help but compare it to other films in the genre that have played on screens the last few months. First-time director Marielle Heller's film comes on the heels of Me and Earl and the Dying Girl and Paper Towns, which proves there can never be a glut of coming-of-age films. Of the three summer offerings, I must say Heller's is the superior.
Based on the novel by Phoebe Gloeckner, Diary of a Teenage Girl takes place in early 1970s' San Francisco. 15-year-old Minnie (fearlessly played by British actress Bel Powley) is a budding underground cartoonist in the vein of Aline Kaminsky (legendary comic artist Robert Crumb's significant other). Minnie's home-life is anything but typical. Its freewheeling, free-love atmosphere, is fostered by her mother Charlotte (well-played by Kristen Wiig), a divorcee who enjoys parties, getting high and hanging out with like-minded people.

Aside from her accomplished drawings, Bel's other concern is her eagerness to have sex. She is acutely aware of the boys in class but also her mother's boyfriend Monroe (wonderfully played by Alexander Skarsgard), who she first develops a crush on then fantasizes about. Her daydreams and thoughts are often accompanied by animation (why are there so many indie teen films with animation?) and an animated Aline Kaminsky, who often serves as her counsel and adviser.

What begins as seemingly harmless companionship becomes serious when Minnie is forthright about what she wants to do with Monroe. He scoffs at first then submits to her overture.

The carnal relationship that follows serves as Minnie's sexual awakening as both she and Monroe's clandestine trysts become frequent. Minnie naturally shares her secret with no one save for her best friend Kimmie (Madeleine Waters) who finds the idea mildly repugnant. Before long, Kimmie is joining Minnie in her daring, sexual forays. Pursuing their sexual adventures to an extreme, Minnie propositions two men in a bar one night, which results in an experience both she and Kimmie regret.

While Minnie begins to see her meetings with Monroe as the foundation for a relationship, he regards their sexual encounters as enjoyable larks without emotional entanglements. Minnie is stung by Monroe's casual, non-committal attitude, but their assignations continue, in spite of their conflicting perspectives on their relationship.

But Minnie's carnal curiosity isn't fixed solely on men. Minnie and a young lesbian she meets at a party share a dalliance and a mutual fascination but the relationship leads nowhere and soon becomes a boundary in her sexual frontier.

Though Monroe is able to curb Charlotte's suspicions about his indiscretion, she discovers them anyway. Given Charlotte's own liberation and her progressive attitudes about sex, we see the limits of her tolerance when she visits her rage on Monroe. She even demands Monroe marry her daughter; a command that is more a threat than a directive.

As the relationship begins to cool, Minnie resumes her drawing and sees the relationship with an enlightened dispassion. The scene where the two meet by chance on a sidewalk; she selling her drawings and he out for a jog, has a finality that gives us some sense of Minnie's passage from innocence to experience.

Though the story in Heller's film seems so familiar, it feels as if its never been told before. It's difficult to make any story on this subject seem new and unfamiliar but Heller accomplishes this with little trouble. It is exhilarating to see a female protagonist in this genre; as so many of these films are told from a male perspective.

It is refreshing to see a more self-determined teen female; one who actively seeks sexual a experience without being punished for doing so by priggish moral imperatives. Of course this story only makes sense set in the sexually-adventurous 70s'.

Bel Powley, whose work has mainly been in television, branches out into cinematic territory with her nuanced performance. A whiff of whimsy works its way into her role; giving her teenage plight some humorous touches. No less affecting are Alexander Skarsgard and Kristen Wiig, who are kind of antagonists in Minnie's maturation process.

I found Diary of a Teenage Girl to not only be a credible contribution to the genre but a vividly rendered drama that is impressive in its candor and willingness to not only examine a teen girl's inner life but her fantasy life as well. It is a film that refuses to make concessions to Hollywood teen drama cliches, which these days seem to involve cancer victims or futuristic dystopias. It's nice to know the age-old anxieties about sex and the emotional demands of adulthood are still the subject of some teen dramas. Thank goodness for Heller's film, which allows us to see a real teen with real-world problems before the deluge of the fall franchises The Hunger Games and The Maze Runner distract us with their over-the-top, cartoonish, melodrama.

The Giver

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Phillip Noyce/Starring: Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Brenton Thwaites, Alexander Skarsgard, Katie Holmes, Taylor Swift and Odeya Rush

All one need know when seeing The Giver are the plots of The Hunger Games and Divergent and if one is familiar enough with both films, then the story from director Phillip Noyce's latest can be traced like a subway map, though it might not be as interesting.

In a future time, society overcomes many of the problems that nearly caused its demise, like war, racism and inequality and in an attempt to prevent further catastrophe, it effectively erases all differences between people. A homogenous society arises, where everyone wears identical clothes and lives in identical homes. Memory of the past and all its horrors has been essentially erased. I guess minorities suffered the same fate, for I don't remember seeing one the entire film. Did society missplace them? Turn them into Soylent Green?

As in Divergent, one is assigned to a career path following one's teen years; each according to his or her attributes. And like the aforementioned flick, one stands before a great hall of bland, almost faceless citizens, who applaud each graduate after their role is designated by the Chief Elder (played by Meryl Streep, who is burdened with a ridiculous hairstyle).

At this point my eyes were nearly rolling out of their sockets at the cornball attempt to depict one more dystopian society onscreen, which unfortunately resembles every other of its kind this year.

And wouldn't you know it, our hero Jonas (Brendon Thwaites) is the last to receive his assignment, which causes much anxiety among his two best friends and his family. And would it surprise you to learn he has all the prized attributes rather than just one? Because Jonas is so unique, his given role is that of a kind of archivist, whose duty it is retain the history of mankind, which the people are expressly forbidden to know.

Jonas reports to a mysterious, bearded man whose library lies inside a building at the periphery of what is essentially an island in the sky; where all the inhabitants of this society reside. Below the island and beneath the cloud cover, one can see the surface of the earth, which is off limits to everyone.

In said building is The Giver (Jeff Bridges); an elderly keeper of civilization's memory. In his hall of books, The Giver takes on Jonas as his eventual successor and in doing so, subjects him to memories from Earth's violent past. As the old man grasps Jonas' arms, the young man sees two soldiers in Vietnam under intense sniper fire. He also has a vision of a sled and a log cabin in the snow, which he doesn't understand--its meaning is revealed later.

Returning to his community and friends, Jonas shares what he has seen and learned (an act prohibited by the authorities) with his friends and in doing so, subjects himself to the long reach of the oppressive big brother. Can you see where this is all going? Jonas becomes a fugitive, placing family and friends at risk and imperils himself in the process. Do you think he might discover the whereabouts of his predecessor; a young woman who vanished into the surface world and was never seen again? Where will Jonas eventually end up, I wonder? (Please note my rhetorical sarcasm).

In addition to being unoriginal and lethally dull, The Giver offers not one surprise or moment of suspense, though it tries. I had to fight like a demon to overcome the drowsies all through the film. It wasn't that I was tired; it was more that I was overcome with the somnolence I tend to feel when I know precisely where the story will go and how it will arrive there. And what were Streep and Bridges doing in this tedium? Bridges has an excuse as a producer but what about Streep? Must have been a favor. It seems fitting a fluff-pixie like Taylor Swift would be in this stale silliness.

The sled, one of the film's visual motifs, is so Rosebud its another eye-roller. And what Jonas discovers at the film's end is so unbearably asinine it may as well be a Budweiser commercial. You'll know what I mean if you bother to see this tripe.

I think what is unforgivable about a film like The Giver isn't its over-familiar setting and story but its creative exhaustion. Ripping off other movies isn't necessarily a crime--especially in Hollywood--but if your story lacks its own identity, then at least offer an exciting clone. I tried to care about the characters but they mostly came across as styrofoam apparitions. If my regard for this film were any more feeble, I might be arrested for a hate crime.

While online today, my eye caught an ad for the film that read "It's like no other movie you've seen before."--People Magazine. If that's really the reviewer's conviction, he or she might think about taking up another line of work, like writing menu descriptions for Chili's. Let my Good Samaritan deed for the month be my saving you money better spent on a better movie. Like no other movie you've seen before, eh? Please.