UNCUT GEMS (2019)

Rated:  R

STARS: Adam Sandler, Kevin Garnett, Idina Menzel, Julia Fox, Eric Bogosian
DIRECTOR: Josh and Benny Safdie
GENRE: Drama

The new Adam Sandler vehicle, Uncut Gems, is so...New York! Meaning it's loud. Meaning it's crass. And in the first five minutes we find ourselves gazing up the main character's ass (a live colonoscopy!).Some things you just have to look away. So I'm thinking oh boy--what's next?  

What's next is a first half of a film that can only be truly appreciated by east coast denizens who are used to hearing New Jersey pronounced as "Joizy." It's a constant barrage of the F word...and the N word. The reason certain individuals communicate in this manner is because they don't have the education, the intelligence, or sufficient command of the English language to communicate in a more creatively appropriate style. And frankly it gets tiresome to observe, amidst the spiritually bankrupt rap culture (money, bling, and twerking hoes) that's taken over and become standard fare in even mainstream entertainment programming now. (Rant finished.)

Howard Ratner  (Adam Sandler) is a shady Manhattan jewelry dealer--a compulsive gambler who can't keep up with his debts, so he robs Peter to pay Paul and ends up being chased and getting the shit beat out of him by thugs who feel that a responsible person should pay back what he owes in a timely manner. 

Howard has obtained an uncut stone with black opals from Ethiopia that he thinks might be worth at least a million at auction. Enter retired NBA superstar Kevin Garnett (playing himself) who gets a look at the stone and becomes enamored of it. He wants it for himself. Here is where Howard does the kind of stupid thing that is the hallmark of horror films (and this is a horror film of sorts) that is required to provide the plot complication that will move the action forward. He loans the stone to Garnett overnight so the athlete can sleep with it, or whatever he's going to do. But getting it back won't be that easy. 

The movie careens along like a jolting New York cab ride with a wild-eyed Iranian at the wheel. And I'm starting to wonder if this isn't going to be another Little Nicky--one of Sandler's early films that was the most insanely out of control and messed up movie I've ever seen. Fortunately, Uncut Gems settles down midpoint, and Howard becomes humanized to a degree. He has a wife (Idina Menzel) who's ready to leave him because she doesn't like his antics with his mistress (Julia Fox). There is a poignant scene where he tries to cajole her into giving him another chance, and we see some of the affable Adam Sandler to which we've grown accustomed.

The film is set in 2012 when Kevin Garnett was still playing in the NBA--and as the tense, skillfully building drama leading to the film's explosive climax plays out, Howard Ratner has wagered his life on Garnett's performance in a big game. It's an uncut gem of a movie that doesn't reach its full potential, as the ending feels like a morality play.

Sandler is superb. And the film itself is just brilliant enough--despite its drawbacks--to avoid a Little Nicky type report card. 

Grade:  B

JILL'S TAKE

I want to take back the "F" I gave Last Christmas and give it to Uncut Gems instead. I have never walked out of a movie in my entire life. But this one had me seriously tempted. I lived in New York for years and this film is an insult to that city. Yes, The Big Apple is loud. Brassy. And yes, it houses some pretty nasty people. (What city doesn't?) But this twisted, hard to follow, screamfest was not only hard on the ears, it seemed almost criminally slapstick at times. (Tony Soprano meets The Marx Brothers.)

I'm an Adam Sandler fan, especially a recent comedy on Netflix he did with JenniferAniston. ("Murder Mystery") But the brothers Benny and Josh Safdie, who wrote and directed this travesty, are light on shading. I'm sure their goal was to outdo The Coen Brothers. They failed with flying bullets.

What did I like? Oy. If I have to say something positive about Uncut Gems, it would be the face of Eric Bogosian who played Arno, one of the three thugs (AKA Three Stooges) and also attended the superfluous and tasteless Seder.

Billed as a 'Crime-Drama-Mystery,' it was a kitchen sink of a movie. It touched on myriad subjects and didn't deliver on any of them. The ending—which I won't reveal—was, in my humble opinion, the only good thing about it.

Grade: D- (only because I can't be too flagrant with my Fs)

MEN, WOMEN & CHILDREN (2014)

Rated: R

Stars: Adam Sandler, Rosemary DeWitt, Jennifer Garner, Ansel Eigort, Judy Greer, Kaitlyn Dever, Dean Norris, Olivia Crocicchia, Elena Kampouris, Emma Thompson

Director: Jason Reitman

Genre: Drama 

Two high-schoolers are texting each other in the hallway, standing close enough that they could have easily walked up and spoken in person. Just some of  the irony in Men, Women, & Children, which attempts to deliver a message about social media and its effect on our lives. But it does so by giving us caricatures instead of characters with any real depth.

The most exaggerated stereotype here is Patricia (Jennifer Garner), whose teen daughter (Kaitlyn Dever) just wants to lead a normal life-- have a boyfriend and so forth--but her every move is tracked by her overbearing and overprotective mother through the girl's cellphone. 

At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have stage mom Donna (Judy Greer), who is intent upon getting her own teenager into showbiz by hook or by crook, including a website featuring photos of questionable taste that the starstruck daughter (Olivia Crocicchia) is more than willing to pose for.  

Adam Sandler plays it straight (which is about as disconcerting as watching Steve Carell in a deadpan role) as a guy whose wife (Rosemary DeWitt), is bored enough to investigate an online site where married folk can hook up and engage in affairs  And like the story line of "The Pina Colada Song," hubby is looking for some extra curricular activity of his own with a working girl. 

Ansel Elgort gives one of the more thoughtful performances as Tim, a star high-school football player who quits the team because he thinks sports is meaningless, then gets hooked on the even less meaningful world of fantasy video games.

Other subplots also tie into the movie's central theme, which seems to be that social media has created a world that never existed before. A world that, in some cases, panders to the worst instincts in ourselves. But like nuclear energy, it's still up to us to use it for good...or for evil.   

Grade:  B -

JILL'S TAKE

Here's an irony for you. After seeing Men, Women & Children, I went home and my internet and cable TV had stopped working! Kaput. Nada. It's one thing to watch a film about the negative effects of too much social media. It's quite another to have it hit home so personally. They scheduled an appointment for me a day and a half later. By the time the guy arrived, I felt like a junkie in need of a fix. This made me appreciate even more the exaggerated characters' dilemmas in Men, Women & Children. It also made me realize how addicted all of us are to being connected to an invisible world.

For all the actors mentioned in Tim's review, the person I'd give the most credit to is the one in charge of graphics. Would that be Bruce Curtis, the production designer? Art Director Rodney Becker? Or the thirteen people listed under "Visual Effects By"? Whoever was responsible for putting text messages, emails, websites, Facebook pages up on screen while the live actors were doing their thing, deserves applause. (Or a smiling emoticon?) Still, I felt a bit sleepy in parts of this film. I also wondered how someone who wasn't computer literate (do they still exist?) would handle it.

Since Tim has scolded me for being too easy to please lately, giving an A and an A+ to the last two films we've reviewed, my grading for this one should make him happy.

Grade: C +

FUNNY PEOPLE

I freely admit to liking many of Adam Sandler's films. 50 First Dates and Reign Over Me are two of my favorites. Sandler also did Little Nicky, one of the most horrendously awful flicks I've ever seen. Just goes to show that nobody can be ON all the time. In Funny People, a Judd Apatow film about the behind the scenes lives of comedians, Sandler and his supporting cast are definitely ON.

Sandler is George Simmons, a famous comedian who gets a glimpse of his own mortality when he's diagnosed with a rare and likely fatal disease. Ira Wright (Seth Rogan) is an aspiring comic who lucks into the role of joke writer and all around lackey for Simmons. As George contemplates his own demise, his onstage routines become darker. He wants to sell off some of his possessions. He calls his ex-girlfriend, Laura, (Leslie Mann) whom he cheated on, and apologizes.

Ira is there to hold George's hand and humor him. Rogan is excellent as a basically nice guy who's so awestruck to be rubbing elbows with stardom that he'll debase himself in just about any manner, just to stay cozy with George. Ira is clueless about how to score with chicks--mouth agape at how easily the jaded George does it, and otherwise takes the perks and trappings of his stardom for granted.

When George's condition improves, as a result of the experimental treatments he's been receiving, he's at a loss for what to do with the rest of his life. Funny People enters a new phase when George and Laura appear to be getting back together--until her lothario husband, Clarke, (Eric Bana) shows up unexpectedly, and the fisticuffs are on.



Unlike The Ugly Truth, (which is fresh in my mind because I just reviewed it) the laughs in Funny People aren't set up or PLAYED just for laughs--all the events flow in a logical progression from what came before, giving this movie a real life feel to it that is rare these days. The profanity here is descriptive and relentless, but it doesn't FEEL as dirty as the gutter talk in The Ugly Truth, which is gratuitous and comes out of nowhere. Here, the trash talking is funny, a plausible extension of the characters' personalities.

And while Funny People lives up to its name throughout, the movie is too long (2 hours and 25 minutes) and bogs down near the end. But I can understand if Apatow, Sandler, and company felt they had too much good material--so many belly laughs--and couldn't bear to part with any of it.

Through all of its twists and turns, the one thread that runs through this film is that of male bonding, and how it can sometimes get lost in all the posturing and colorful language guys are compelled to bounce off each other...in order to mask their true affection for one another.

GRADE: A-