(This is not a movie review, but my impressions of The American.)

George Clooney’s The American opens in theatres tomorrow. This is a different kind of a film with sparse dialogs, hauntingly beautiful images accompanied by long stretches of silence and ambient sounds where the background score is used in a sparse and elegant way. That is it: sparse and elegant are the two words that best describe this movie. Outsider and a lone wolf are the terms that come to mind when you watch Clooney in The American. In some ways I was reminded of Clooney’s role in Syriana except in The American we see a well-dressed, sleek and athletic Clooney. We see a very different Europe in this film. The images of Sweden and Italy, which is where the film was shot are not the usual images of Sweden and Italy that you see in American films.

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Chris Nolan directing Di Caprio & Murphy

“I am the most skilled extractor,” says Leonardo DiCaprio in Chris Nolan’s Inception . “You taught me to navigate people’s mind,” DiCaprio says to Michael Caine, his mentor and father-in-law in the film. “The truth is it is Nolan who is the skilled extractor and navigator. It is Nolan who got the best out of his cast, crew and audience via his new film Inception and that is a rare feat to achieve. Manipulating minds via dreams is an old theme that many science fiction lovers will recognize, but translating that theme in celluloid that appeals to a vast section of the audience is not that easy to achieve and this is where Nolan has exhibited his mastery as a story teller and director.

It has taken over a decade for Nolan to make Inception and convince DiCaprio to act in one of his productions. This might come as a surprise to some when you consider that Nolan has had a string of box office hits including Memento and The Dark Knight among others. “About ten years ago, I became fascinated with the subject of dreams, about the relationship of our waking life to our dreaming life,” Nolan says. As he put it, “At the heart of the movie is the notion that an idea is indeed the most resilient and powerful parasite.”

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Admit it, you paused for a minute when you read “storys” instead of stories when you saw the title I Hate Love Storys. Why was “Storys” spelt/spelled that way? Was there a missing apostrophe or did someone make a typo when registering the title of the film? Or, maybe it was a deliberate ploy to draw people’s attention? I will never know the answer since I don’t have contacts to co-producer Karan Johar even though I follow him on Twitter or director Punit Malhotra, who is also on Twitter.

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I was really looking forward to watching M Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender. I was curious to see how Shyamalan translates this hugely popular Nickelodeon series into a movie. I was also curious to see The Last Airbender in 3D since that was not in the original plan. You see the success of James Cameron’s Avatar changed the game plan for many Hollywood directors, who decided to change course mid-stream and take the 3D route. I was also curious to see how Dev Patel of Slumdog Millionaire fame or Aasif Mandvi from The Daily Show were in this film.

Avatar: The Last Airbender was originally produced and directed by Dante Di Martino and Bryan Konietzkon and aired on Nickelodeon in 2005. The animated series quickly gained a huge fan following, including Shyamalan’s kids. He started watching the show with his kids and got hooked and decided to make a feature film and that is how the film was born. Night Shyamalan does a fantastic job of films where children play a key role. Remember Haley Osment in The Sixth Sense? Sadly, the last two films of Shyamalan’s ended up disappointing quite a few of his fans. There is a lot of expectation from Shyamalan this time around with his latest film.

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It was the laughter that caught my attention. Nay, it was the people howling with laughter that caught my attention and had me from the start. You see I was late & therefore missed the first 1o minutes of Grown Ups. That laughter was like a chorus from the audience and continued for the next 92 minutes. (The movie is 102 minutes long).

Grown Ups is funny, entertaining and yes, has a strong dose of juvenile sense of humor, but that is to be expected when you see a film written by Adam Sandler. The humor is bratty and bawdy with some clever one-line zingers that we expect to hear (admit it) from a movie that includes Sandler, Kevin James (Paul Blart & Hitch),David Spade, Chris Rock and Rob Schneider.

Grown Ups

Grown Ups is about 5 childhood friends who are meeting after 30 years at the funeral of their basketball coach. The friends end up spending a weekend with their families at a big house and what happens in a span of 3 days is what the films is about. Four are married, while Spade leads a footloose and carefree lifestyle of an unattached bachelor.

Sandler is a successful Hollywood agent, with a successful fashion designer wife played by Salma Hayek. James pretends to be the owner of a small business. Rock is a house husband with wife Maya Rudolph bringing home the bacon. And Schneider has a thing for older women and is happily married for the third time. Adding spice to their weekend sojourn is Schneider’s daughters from his first marriage. You have to watch the movie to find out what happens when they all get together.

Is there a message in the movie? Sort of. Here is one from Schneider’s wife: In life the first act is exiting. It is the second act that is where the depth comes. (Now, don’t go looking for depth in the movie.)  The movie also highlights the passage of time and the invasion of technology into our lives, especially into the lives of young children. Grown Ups underscores how today’s kids no longer go out and play in the great outdoors, but prefer to be inside the house texting, playing on their Nintendos or other gaming device. The rapid change in our lifestyle is highlighted by this dialog: “Hey Dad what is the box attached to the TV?” asks Sandler son looking at an old-style TV. Sandler embarrassingly replies that not everyone has an LCD TV.

The movie is fun and entertaining with a strong dose of juvenile humor.

The movie is rated PG-13 for crude material including suggestive references, language and some male rear nudity.

Directed by: Dennis Dugan
Written by: Adam Sandler & Fred Wolf
Cast:  Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Chris Rock, David Spade, Rob Schneider, Salma Hayek, Maria Bello, Maya Rudolph