'Ode to Joy'

It would be too easy to call the strained romantic comedy “Ode to Joy” a joyless exercise — but it’s hard to think of an adjective that works better.

The seed for this story comes from a “This American Life” story about a guy who suffers from cataplexy, a form of narcolepsy in which the sufferer experiences muscle weakness and even blacks out when having any strong emotion — particularly happiness. Screenwriter Max Werner and director Jason Winer travel far afield of the original story, with a dismal collection of shrill, unpleasant characters in a scenario that plays the real problems of cataplexy for cheap laughs.

Charlie (Martin Freeman) is the one suffering cataplexy in this story, and he goes to great lengths to keep himself from getting overwhelmed by cuteness. He walks to his boring job at the Brooklyn library wearing headphones that play dirges. He averts his gaze at cute dogs or even cuter children. When his sister Liza (Shannon Woodward) is getting married, Charlie has his younger brother, Cooper (Jake Lacy), mention sad news events — like dolphin slaughter or the war in Syria — to keep him from becoming too elated.

Into this well-ordered, if somewhat depressing, life enters Francesca. I could tell you that Francesca is vivacious, overflowing with bubbly personality and a knockout to boot — or I could tell you she’s played by Morena Baccarin, from the “Deadpool” movies and “Firefly,” and that would be saying the same thing. 

How Charlie meets Francesca qualifies as one of the most aggressively dumb meet-cutes in movie history. Things pick up on their first date — a depressing one-man play, followed by a long walk in the rain talking about Francesca’s cancer-stricken aunt, Sylvia (Jane Curtin) — until she asks him to come up to her place, and Charlie promptly hits the concrete. The date ends in the emergency room, and Cooper must tell Francesca about his ailment.

Charlie tells Francesca they can’t date any more, but he does suggest she go out with Cooper. This turns out to be a good way for Charlie and Francesca to stay in each other’s orbit, since Charlie can’t get too happy knowing she’s going out with his brother. This plan is tested when Cooper, Francesca, Charlie and his mousy substitute girlfriend, Bethany (played by Melissa Rauch from “The Big Bang Theory”) go for a weekend double date at an upstate B&B.

It’s probably instructive — or at least cautionary — to look into the filmmakers’ IMDb listings. There, one will see that Winer hasn’t made a movie since that unfulfilling “Arthur” remake with Russell Brand in 2011, and Werner’s last movie script was the howlingly awful Halloweek kids’ movie “Fun Size.” Both have done a lot of TV work since, but it hasn’t prepared them for sustaining a story past formulaic plot devices or shaping authentic, lived-in characters.

Freeman and Baccarin have little chemistry, even when their characters are trying to generate some, and Lacy is too convincing at being a shallow jerk to make his role any fun. The only genuine laughs come from Rauch’s go-for-broke performance as the space-case Bethany, highlighted by a disturbingly note-perfect imitation of the late Dolores O’Riordan performing The Cranberries’ Irish death song “Zombie.” Rauch seems to be the only person in “Ode to Joy” who was given permission to make anyone laugh.

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‘Ode to Joy’

★★

Opened August 9 in select cities and on demand; opens Friday, August 16, at the Megaplex Gateway (Salt Lake City), Megaplex Jordan Commons (Sandy), and Megaplex Thanksgiving Point (Lehi). Rated R for some language and sexual references. Running time: 97 minutes.

'The Angry Birds Movie 2' and 'Hair Love'

Where’s a good slingshot to knock me out and erase my memory of seeing “The Angry Birds Movie 2”?

The first movie in this franchise, you may recall, brought the mobile-phone game to the screen, turning the avian projectiles into characters — though that’s a generous word for two-dimensional stereotypes with names. 

The lead, the hot-tempered Red (voiced by Jason Sudeikis), was the only one of the inhabitants of Bird Island to think the green piggies visiting the island were up to no good. After the piggies kidnapped the birds’ eggs, Red led a team that included boomerang-shaped Chuck (voiced by Josh Gad) and volatile Bomb (voiced by Danny McBride) to slingshot to Piggy Island and save the day.

The sequel starts with Red as Bird Island’s resident hero, but a nervous one. Inside, he fears people will forget his past heroics and leave him as lonely as before. (Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself” plays in Red’s imaginings, the first of many obvious and supposedly humorous needle-drops.) That’s why Red is suspicious when the pig leader, Leonard (voiced by Bill Hader), approaches the birds with a request for a truce.

Leonard and his experts report that there is a previously unknown third island, Eagle Island, whose evil leader Zeta (voiced by Leslie Jones) is shooting balls of ice and plotting to shoot lava-filled ice balls at both islands. Red and Leonard agree to team up to stop Zeta, but each has trouble agreeing on who should command the team, which includes Chuck, Bomb and the not-so-heroic Mighty Eagle (voiced by Peter Dinklage).

Red also has issues with the team’s newest and smartest member, the engineering wizard Silver (voiced by Rachel Bloom), Chuck’s sister. Red and Silver instantly annoy each other — which even the youngest audience members can see is a precursor to friendship and maybe romance.

That synopsis takes longer to read than to play out, meaning first-time feature director Thurop Van Orman (creator of the beloved Cartoon Network series “The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack”) and his three screenwriters have to pad a lot. They fill the void with rude humor, improvised dialogue that’s not as funny as its creators think, and a supporting voice cast that includes Awkwafina, Tiffany Haddish, Maya Rudolph, Sterling K. Brown and Eugenio Derbez. 

And when that’s not enough — and it isn’t — there’s a B-plot involving three hatchlings trying to rescue three eggs they accidentally endangered. These sections provide the movie’s few laughs, with sight gags that test the laws of cartoon physics much like the Scrat scenes in the better “Ice Age” movies.

The saddest part of “The Angry Birds Movie 2” is that Sony Pictures Animation has paired this terrible feature with a really good short film. “Hair Love,” written by “BlacKkKlansman” executive producer Matthew A. Cherry (who co-directed with former Pixar animator Everett Downing Jr. and “The Proud Family” creator Bruce W. Smith) from Cherry’s children’s book, shows an African American girl trying to do her hair just right by following her favorite YouTube hairstyling vlogger (voiced by Issa Rae). The girl’s attempts are funny; her reasons are touching.

“Hair Love” — made for $200,000, raised on Kickstarter — packs more heart, warmth, smarts and skill into six minutes than “The Angry Birds Movie 2” manages in 16 times that length. Hollywood needs to encourage Cherry and his crew to make more movies, long or short.

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‘The Angry Birds Movie 2’

★

Opens Tuesday, August 13, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for rude humor and action. Running time: 96 minutes.

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‘Hair Love’

★★★★

Screens with “The Angry Birds Movie 2.” Rated G. Running time: 6 minutes.

'Dora and the Lost City of Gold'

If kids have to grow up, why shouldn’t the characters they watched when they were little? That question, and the need for Paramount and Nickelodeon to roll over a lucrative franchise — can you say “intellectual property”? — is why we have “Dora and the Lost City of Gold.”

Thankfully, the powers that be picked director James Bobin, who performed similar synergistic magic upgrading “The Muppets,” to bring Nickelodeon’s plucky bilingual adventurer Dora the Explorer into her teen years with the right mix of earnest naivete and knowing irony.

After a prologue in which six-year-old Dora (Madelyn Miranda) frolics in the jungle with her cousin Diego (Malachi Barton) before he moves to the big city, a 16-year-old Dora appears, in the perky form of Isabela Moner (“instant Family,” “Sicario: Day of the Soldato”). Dora still swings through the jungle in her pink T-shirt and orange shorts, marveling at the wonders of nature, only this time creating her own vlog. Most importantly, the movie establishes that some aspects of Dora’s adventures — like her friend Boots, a talking monkey — are purely in her fertile imagination.

Dora’s parents (Eva Longoria and Michael Peña) are archaeology professors, on the verge of making a major discovery: An ancient city, Parapata, that stores a pile of Incan gold. The real treasure, Dad reminds Dora, isn’t riches but the satisfaction of expanding human knowledge. “We’re explorers, Dora, not treasure hunters,” Dad says.

But they’re also worried parents, so for this expedition, they’ve decided not to take Dora along. Instead, she’ll go to the city — Los Angeles — to stay with a 17-year-old Diego (Jeff Wahlberg, nephew of Mark and Donnie) lives, trying to survive the living hell that is high school.

Dora’s outgoing attitude, vast home-schooled knowledge and backpack full of jungle survival gear make her stand out in high school. She quickly gains an enemy in Sammy (Madeleine Madden), the honor roll mean girl, and an admirer in nerdy Randy (Nicholas Coombe). On a field trip to the natural history museum, Dora, Diego, Sammy and Randy become unwilling partners on a scavenger hunt — and, when treasure hunters kidnap them, the foursome find themselves in the jungle, searching for Dora’s missing parents. Another explorer, Alejandro (Eugenio Derbez), also factors into the search.

Screenwriters Matthew Robinson (“The Invention of Lying”) and Nicholas Stoller (“The Muppets,” “Muppets Most Wanted”) make it clear early on that they know this is a movie — specifically, a “Dora” movie. The kids know that jungle mazes only happen in “Indiana Jones” movies, even when they’re forced to survive one. When Dora and Diego get a whiff of hallucinogenic spores, of course their acid trip references the original “Dora the Explorer.” And when Dora’s animal acquaintances speak, of course it’s with the voices of Danny Trejo and Benicio Del Toro.

Where the writers provide the winking irony, it’s Moner’s plucky Dora who provides the charming innocence. Moner’s Dora dives into every adventure, from the perils of the jungle to the social minefield of the American high school, and brightens the mood wherever she goes. Moner makes “Dora and the Lost City of Gold” a real treasure.

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‘Dora and the Lost City of Gold’

★★★

Opens Friday, August 9, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for some action and impolite humor. Running time: 102 minutes.

'The Kitchen'

When the gangster drama “The Kitchen” kicks into high gear, it’s exhilarating — giving the audience the same forbidden danger its women are feeling as they learn to navigate the man’s world of the Irish mob.

Writer and first-time director Andrea Berloff can’t quite sustain that intense vibe all the way to the end, but it’s good while it lasts.

The setting for Berloff’s adaptation of Ollie Masters and Ming Doyle’s DC/Vertigo graphic novel is Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan, in 1978. It starts when three Irish mobsters — Kevin (James Badge Dale), Jimmy (Brian d’Arcy James) and Rob (Jeremy Bobb) — get caught during a hold-up by a pair of FBI agents (Common and E.J. Bonilla) who have been staking them out. The guys get three years in prison, and their boss, Little Jackie (Myk Watford), tells their wives that they’ll be taken care for.

Jimmy’s wife, Kathy (Melissa McCarthy), knows the truth, that Jackie’s payments to the women — Kevin’s wife, Ruby (Tiffany Haddish), and Rob’s long-abused wife Claire (Elisabeth Moss) — aren’t enough to make ends meet. Kathy also knows that a lot of the Hell’s Kitchen businesses haven’t been getting Jackie’s protection, for which they pay handsomely. So Kathy enlists Ruby and Claire to start taking over Jackie’s collections, paying some of Jackie’s muscle to make it stick.

The mob matriarch, Helen (Margo Martindale) — who is also Ruby’s constantly disapproving mother-in-law — warns the three that they are in over their heads. But the women show a surprising aptitude for crime. Kathy charms the neighborhood businesses, Ruby is a shrewd negotiator — particularly with Brooklyn mob boss Alfonso Coretti (Bill Camp) — and Claire, after reuniting with an old crush, a contract killer named Gabriel (Domhnall Gleeson), blossoms as a stone-cold killer.

Berloff (who shared an Oscar nomination for her writing on “Straight Outta Compton”) and cinematographer Maryse Alberti (“Creed,” “Velvet Goldmine”) saturate the screen with the details of ‘70s New York, from the grimy, blood-stained streets to the main characters’ Farrah Fawcett flip hairstyles. Martin Scorsese’s characters would feel right at home, until they had to face the tough-as-nails women who, in their own words, “are through being beaten down.”

McCarthy and Haddish, both better known for their comedic skills, are rock solid doing drama. They manage to keep pace with Moss, one of the best actors working today, who makes Claire’s transformation from doormat to assassin downright chilling.

It’s such a difficult juggling act, keeping all the elements balanced, that it’s not too surprising that Berloff loses the handle in the final reel. The resolution feels like a cheat, a nod to Hollywood convention that the rest of “The Kitchen” avoids so well.

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‘The Kitchen’

★★★

Opens Friday, August 9, in theaters everywhere. Rated R for violence, language throughout and some sexual content. Running time: 102 minutes.

'The Peanut Butter Falcon'

When learning the plot of “The Peanut Butter Falcon,” a reader may think it’s not a real movie — because no one in their right minds would take such incongruous elements as crab fishing, professional wrestling and Down Syndrome and combine them in a heartwarming, Mark Twain-esque comedy-drama.

However, that’s exactly what the writing and directing team of Tyler Nilson and Mike Schwartz have done for their feature debut. And this weird concoction somehow works, thanks in no small part to the acting chops of Shia LaBeouf and the charm of newcomer Zack Gottsagen.

Read the full review at sltrib.com.

'Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark'

For teens and pre-teens back in the ‘80s, Alvin Schwartz’ 1981 horror anthology “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” (and its sequels, printed in 1984 and 1991) were old-fashioned frightmares — effective because they were just long enough to plant the seeds of terror and let the reader’s imagination do the rest.

Now comes a movie bearing Schwartz’ ominous title, which strings some of those iconic stories to their best use on a clothesline of a story.

It’s Halloween 1968 in Mill Valley, Pa., and bookish high-schooler Stella Nicholls (Zoe Colletti) is preparing for a night out with her pals Auggie (Gabriel Rush) and Chuck (Austin Zajur) to prank the school bully, Tommy (Austn Abrams). They do, and Tommy chases the trio through the drive-in, where they find refuge in the car of Ramón (Michael Garza), an 18-year-old Mexican-American passing through town. 

Stella recognizes Ramón as a fellow horror freak (the movie playing at the drive-in is George Romero’s “Night of the Living Dead,” presumably on its initial theatrical run), so she says, “You want to see a haunted house?” Stella leads the guys to the old Bellows house, where a century ago Sarah Bellows was locked away in a basement room, telling stories to kids through the walls — and those kids were never seen again.

Stella finds one of Sarah’s journals, filled with stories seemingly written in blood. The last story in the book seems freshly written, about a scarecrow that comes to life. What Stella and the guys don’t know is that, not too far away, Tommy is in the cornfield on his family’s farm — being pursued by a sinister scarecrow.

The next night, Stella sees the bloody words form on the page — this time making one of her friends disappear. Stella and Ramón have to work together to figure out how Sarah Bellows, who supposedly died 70 years earlier, could be making these horrific stories appear and come to life.

Director André Øvredal, who made the low-budget shocker “The Autopsy of Jane Doe,” strikes the right blend of outright frights and brooding atmosphere. True to the books’ demographic, the scares aren’t too gory, but still sharp enough to make moviegoers jump in their seats. (There’s a thing with spiders that will make fans of “Dr. Pimple Popper” crawl under their seats.) 

The screenplay, by the brother team of Dan and Kevin Hageman, makes the stories’ episodic nature work in the movie’s favor. Some credit must go to producer Guillermo Del Toro, who shares story credit, for some of the saturation of dark mood. The Hagemans also add notes of dread by placing two real-life horror stories in the background: The Vietnam War and the impending presidential election of Richard Nixon.

The cast of mostiy unknowns, led by the plucky Colletti, keep the terror at a human level — and Natalie Ganzhorn, who plays Chuck’s irritated big sister, is a scream queen in the making. The teens are a perfect fit for a movie that serves up the right level of frights for the slumber-party set.

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‘Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark’

★★★

Opens Friday, August 9, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for terror/violence, disturbing images, thematic elements, language including racial epithets, and brief sexual references. Running time: 111 minutes.

'The Art of Racing in the Rain'

In all honesty, most people will decide whether the tearjerker family drama “The Art of Racing in the Rain” is their kind of movie based on two bits of information: The story is told by the family dog, and that dog is voiced by Kevin Costner.

Dog people will be on board. Everybody else, you’re on your own.

The dog is a labrador named Enzo, named by the man who adopted him, Denny Swift (Milo Ventimiglia), for the founder of the Ferrari company. Denny is a race-car driver, and he takes Enzo along to hang out in the infield while he races. Enzo loves the track, and also loves hanging at home with Denny, watching racing footage on TV and learning every trick Denny knows about going fast and outmaneuvering the elements.

As Denny works to build his racing career, life takes him in directions he and Enzo never expected. One of those directions is Eve (Amanda Seyfried), for whom Denny falls instantly, even though on their first meeting she throws up a big red flag: “I’m not really a dog person.” Denny replies, “That’s OK, Enzo’s more person than dog.” In short order, Enzo sees that two creatures in an apartment becomes three — and, after marriage, four, with the arrival of a baby girl, Zoe.

Enzo declares, to us if not to his family, that his purpose in life is to protect Zoe and Eve from harm. That pledge becomes difficult to honor, particularly when Eve starts to become ill — something Enzo can smell before any of the humans around them, but which the audience detects even sooner based on Eve’s conspicuous aspirin consumption.

Director Simon Curtis (“Goodbye Christopher Robin”) and screenwriter Mark Bomback (“Dawn of the Planet of the Apes”) adapt Garth Stein’s 2008 novel as a series of tragic vignettes. Each step of the Swift family’s journey is fraught with drama and sadness, and Enzo steadfastly observes the foibles of human existence through disease, death, legal conflict and resolution.

Nothing will deny the four-hankie waterworks Stein’s story sets out for us — but Costner’s gruff, no-nonsense narration comes close to cutting through the manipulations. That down-home voice, capturing Enzo’s devotion and his dream of being reincarnated as a human, makes “The Art of Racing in the Rain” more palpable than this emotional ride probably should be.

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‘The Art of Racing in the Rain’

★★1/2

Opens Friday, August 9, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG for thematic material. Running time: 109 minutes.

'Brian Banks'

Telling an inspirational true story does not absolve a filmmaker from the responsibility of telling that story well — and director Tom Shadyac certainly fumbles with “Brian Banks,” a true story of justice too long deferred and denied.

As a teen, Banks (played by Aldis Hodge) had it all going for him. He was a standout linebacker in high school, and USC’s coach, Pete Carroll (Matt Battaglia), had his eye on the kid as an NFL star someday. Then, in 2002, he was wrongfully accused of raping a classmate. Tried as an adult, and with bad advice from his lawyer, he took a plea deal — leading to six years in prison, five years of restrictive probation, and a lifetime on a sex-offender list.

The movie starts toward the end of that timeline, as Banks is desperate to restart his delayed football career, but his parole officer (Dorian Missick) won’t let him play community college ball because Banks might break his 24/7 ankle monitor. Banks also finds landing a job impossible, because he has to acknowledge his criminal record on the applications.

Banks believes his only hope is the California Innocence Project, a nonprofit team of lawyers who work to get wrongfully convicted inmates exonerated. The project’s founder, Justin Brooks (played by Greg Kinnear), tells Banks that the odds are against him — because the California justice system will retry cases only if there extraordinary evidence proving a prisoner’s innocence. Also, Brooks points out, Banks is at least out on probation, something the lifers the project usually handles can’t say.

Shadyac is not known for nuance; his resumé ranges from the grossly comical “Ace Ventura, Pet Detective” to the suffocatingly smarmy “Patch Adams.” Working off a script by Doug Atchison (“Akeelah and the Bee”), Shadyac works overtime to paint Banks as a wounded martyr, suffering for the sins of a broken judicial system — all of which is probably true, but saying so in such a hamfisted narrative doesn’t do Banks, or Brooks’ cause, any favors.

Hodge (“Straight Outta Compton”) gives a strong performance, captured Banks’ frustration at the legal system and the tight lid he barely keeps on his emotions. But Shadyac lets Hodge down, creating a waxwork monument to perseverance rather than a fully realized character — complete with Morgan Freeman in his voice-of-God mode as Banks’ prison teacher and father figure. (If you want to see Hodge really shine in a tale of injustice, wait for Chinonye Chukwu’s Sundance-winning “Clemency,” to be released for award season.)

“Brian Banks” also becomes problematic in its shallow handling of its women characters, from Banks’ stalwart mom (Sherri Shepherd) to the troubling portrayal of Banks’ young accuser (Xosha Roquemore). Shadyac becomes so single-minded in depicting Banks as flawless that the director lets other characters’ subtle humanity fly out the window.

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‘Brian Banks’

★★

Opens Friday, August 9, in theaters everywhere. Rated PG-13 for thematic content and related images, and for language. Running time: 99 minutes.