FRIENDS WITH KIDS (2012)

Rated: R


STARS: Jennifer Westfeldt,  Adam Scott,  Maya Rudolph,  Kristen Wiig,  John Hamm, Chris O'Dowd,  Megan Fox
DIRECTOR: Jennifer Westfeldt
GENRE: Romantic Comedy/ Drama


Maya Rudolph, with her hair pinned up, (not a flattering style for most women--flat-out  dreadful on her) and looking matronly in that bloated kind of way-- with the sound of young children screaming in the background--is enough to give any fancy-free bachelor the heebie jeebies about the prospect of "connubial bliss" in the new romantic comedy, Friends With Kids.


Kyra Sedgwick look-alike Jennifer Westfeldt writes, directs, and stars as Julie-- a thirty-something New Yorker whose biological clock is ticking. She and longtime best friend, Jason, (Adam Scott) observe their married friends, Leslie and Alex, (Maya Rudolph and Chris O'Dowd) and Missy and Ben, (Kristen Wiig & John Hamm) and figure there must be a better formula. Neither Julie nor Jason have found anyone they want to settle down with, but both are amenable to the idea of child rearing, And though they are not physically attracted to one another, they decide to "do it" one time, become pregnant, and raise the child together while keeping their relationship platonic--which gives them both the freedom to continue to screw around with whomever. THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS! 


Ah, if  only there were such a thing.   


So out pops an adorable kid, and things go along nicely for about two years, as our friends- without-benefits couple feels they've beaten the system and avoided the pitfalls of the dreary lives their married friends with kids have settled into. Jason meets his perfect woman, a Broadway dancer named Mary Jane, (Megan Fox) and Julie finds her hunky guy, and hey...it appears that what we have here is a forward thinking,  avant garde kind of romantic comedy!


Not so fast,  Kemosabe!


You can bend, but not break the romcom formula, and the ending of Friends With Kids is telegraphed from the time Jason and Julie's little scheme is hatched--though there are plenty of deftly placed road hazards along the way to keep many a- guessing about that. 


The film kicks into another gear when their  son asks: WHY DOESN'T DADDY STAY ALL NIGHT?  Aha...now we've all got to stop and think about what it means to be a REAL mom and dad--and that becomes the essential and lingering question in Friends With Kids--and it's what gives the movie its deeper and more contemplative tone. 


If you buy the idea set forth in When Harry Met Sally--that men and women cannot TRULY be friends, (unless they're both hideous) because there is always this subtle boy-girl thing operating beneath the surface, then the oh-how-I-could-never-be-attracted-to-you thing is a bit overplayed here. Both Jason and Julie are attractive people, and the awkwardness and near revulsion they seem to feel for each other when they initially  hop into bed to do the deed is played for laughs--not realism!


Jennifer Westfeldt is just as big a potty-mouth as any male screenwriter, which may or may not add to your enjoyment of this film. I think I was the only guy in the theater--surrounded by chicks on all sides--and they were yukking it up  throughout.


Oh, how jaded we've all become. Guess my old-fashioned side is showing, but I think we guys have lost some kind of edge when women can no longer be shocked by in-your-face sexuality. 


Grade:  B +

TRANSFORMERS 2: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN

Yes, Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen is totally BANANAS-- but I like bananas, generally speaking. The transformers are giant shape-shifting robots that fall into two camps: The AUTOBOTS and the DECEPTICONS. Like the Democrats and the Republicans, they've been at war with each other since day one. On their home planet, Cybertron, they battled over Allspark--the energy source that gave them life. The Allspark gets shipped off the planet (Federal Express?) and ends up on Earth. That's the bare bones backstory from the first movie, and now the stage is set in Transformers 2 for the autobots--led by Optimus Prime, and the decepticons, led by Megatron--to battle it out again, this time with the fate of our planet hanging in the balance.

Hapless college student Sam Witwicky, (Shia LaBeouf) who killed Megatron in the first film, is swept up in the conflict again--along with his girlfriend Mikaela, (Megan Fox-the obligatory eye candy for teenage boys) and his parents (Kevin Dunn and Julie White).

Transformers 2 is nearly non-stop action, with a few short breathers here and there--and sometimes it's hard to tell who's beating the living crap out of whom, since one big hulking robot looks pretty much like another (which wouldn't be politically correct to say on Cybertron). It's a big, ostentatious, chaotic, clang and bang fest--and I was just impressed by the sheer immensity and spectacle of it all (but then, I'm impressed by the 4-slice toaster!)

It's kind of like life...you may not know what's going on, but you can still enjoy yourself.

My favorite scene has got to be when Sam's mother gobbles some pot brownies, totally loses it,

and then runs amuck--which I've always wanted to do in a gorilla suit. There's something endearing about a gorilla suit that makes people more forgiving of the one who's running amuck.

There's a lot of off the wall humor in Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen--surprising, and yes, refreshing--since most action/thriller flicks take themselves much more seriously.

But I suppose that, when it comes down to it, what really appeals to me about this film is the many faces of heroism--both human and otherwise. I'd like to think that we'd all step up to the plate if some crazy, two-storied, clanking hulks of scrap metal were fighting and screwing around on top of the pyramids and causing them to, like...start to crumble and stuff. Somebody already messed with the nose on the Sphinx, and I'm still annoyed about that.

And now a word about reviving "dead" characters in sequels. Ever since J.R. Ewing got shot and supposedly died in the TV finale of Dallas in 1980--then got resurrected five years later in a follow up film--TV and screen writers have been playing fast and loose with the facts of life and death in Freddy Krueger-like fashion. A character like Megatron can be killed and revived as many times as may be convenient, when millions of bucks are on the line. The special effects (or computer graphics imagery) are the real stars of these blockbuster movies, and because it takes a lot of time and and a grueling amount of work to design and animate one of these big bad boys, expect that the dead shall rise again in the inevitable third installment.

GRADE: B +