Mel Brooks sends up Alfred Hitchcock in High Anxiety, a spoof centered around a psychiatrist who uncovers shenanigans at ‘The Psychoneurotic Institute for the Very, VERY Nervous’. Brooks plays the shrink, a man who must cope with his own ‘high anxiety’ while getting to the bottom of a murder mystery before the Institute’s nefarious head nurse and former administrator order him killed! Cloris Leachman and Harvey Korman are stand-outs as the villains. In one scene, you see the hunch-backed, mustached Leachman don a Nazi uniform when she lashes the bound Korman during a clandestine S&M session.
Future Oscar-winner (I’ve been saying this since 2001’s Manic) Joseph Gordon-Levitt makes an auspicious writing/directing debut with Don Jon, a character study of a young New Jersey guy whose addiction to pornography takes its toll on his relationships with women. Gordon-Levitt pumped up to play the title character, but I hope he drops the muscle mass soon — his head’s too small for a body that big! The film is superbly cast. Scarlett Johansson impresses me for the first time ever here, playing a sex-pot who knocks Jon off his feet. Tony Danza and Glenne Headly are great as Jon’s parents, and the ever-reliable Julianne Moore is memorable as a quirky but sullen older woman who competes for Jon’s affections as the story wears on.
Leslie Mann and Paul Rudd star as two 40-year-olds struggling to balance the demands of their marriage, children, parents, and jobs. This Is 40 is billed as a ‘sort of’ sequel to Knocked Up, where Mann and Rudd originated the roles. Both films were directed by Judd Apatow, and both take a more pastiche approach to their narratives. On one hand, I like the fly-on-the-wall approach. It favors character over formulaic story structure. On the other hand, without that trusted structure, Apatow’s movies just seem to go on forever and ever and ever. This one is two hours and fifteen minutes, and I stand by my rule that no comedy should exceed an hour forty five.
