To a young kid obsessed with everything 007-related, the late 60s spy spoof Get Smart – whose reruns once aired, conveniently, right before bedtime on Nick at Nite – was about the coolest thing on television at the time.

Sure, some of the gags were probably over my head, but all the goodhearted swipes at the Bond series were always appreciated, and even at that age I could recognize the late Don Adams’ innate and inimitable comedic genius – that man could pop off catchphrases with the best of them, and nobody’s ever gotten more comic mileage out of talking into a shoe.

With all that in mind, I have to say I’m a little wary of this week’s Hollywood remake of my beloved show. Yes, I think Steve Carell was the best possible choice to play Maxwell Smart, and he should be well matched by co-stars Anne Hathaway and Dwayne “Sorry, But I’m Still Going to Refer to You as ‘The Rock’” Johnson, but I enjoyed Bewitched and Scooby Doo on the small screen, too, and look what happened when they got made into big-budget summer movies. Get Smart had a madcap comedic energy that was all its own, and I can’t imagine that would be an easy thing to duplicate and/or update for modern moviegoers – though I’ll be the first one to sing the filmmakers’ praises if they actually get it right.

As big-screen spy spoofs go, however, fans of the old-school Get Smart series could do a lot worse than the 1984 comedy Top Secret!, featuring a pre-Iceman Val Kilmer in his first movie role. Written and directed by Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker – the guys responsible for Airplane!, still probably the greatest spoof movie of all time – the cult favorite is wall-to-wall packed with clever visual gags, and makes today’s unfortunate glut of shoddily-constructed spoofs (which Abrahams and the Zuckers, sadly, are partially responsible for) seem even lamer than we already know they are.

Kilmer stars as an Elvis-like American rock-and-roll heartthrob named Nick Rivers who’s just hit the top of the charts with his hit song Skeet Surfin’ – a Beach Boys-esque tune about, well, surfing and shooting skeet (simultaneously, of course). In the film’s world, East Germany is run by some nefarious Nazis, who’ve invited Nick to perform at a concert that’s actually a smokescreen for a world-domination scheme involving the requisite kidnapped scientist, a magnet that attracts submarines, and a whole lot of cackling. Never mind the plot, however, since even the filmmakers admit that it’s just an excuse to string together gags that leaves no form of silliness unturned – from hilarious gibberish posing as German to an unexpected (and spot-on) parody of the 80s trash classic The Blue Lagoon to a ballet sequence that seemingly anticipates the arrival of Viagra more than a decade before it was invented. My personal favorite: a gag involving an industrial-size “marital aid,” the easy-to-miss punchline to which is the funniest line in the movie (it’s amazing what you could get away with in a PG-rated flick back then). A cameo by Pac-man ranks a close second.

Never as consistent or laugh-out-loud hilarious as Airplane!, Top Secret! is inventive and energetic throughout and showcases one of the most charismatic performances in Kilmer’s career – he even does all his own singing and dancing. The supporting cast is mostly game (and screen legend Omar Sharif has some very funny moments as an ill-fated secret agent) but the film’s appeal lies not so much in the performances but in the inspired goofiness of the sight gags and production design, both uncommonly good for a comedy of this type. You’ve just got to love a movie that includes the only underwater barroom brawl in film history, and in which East German stationery bears the slogan “Better Government Through Intimidation.”

Easily and pretty cheaply available on dvd, Top Secret! is exactly the kind of movie that Get Smart should be, and has rightly earned its status as a classic yukfest of the VHS era. They simply don’t make spoofs like this anymore, but they sure ought to.

Well folks, the most eagerly anticipated movie of 2008 is finally upon us this week. Yes, that’s right, I’m talking about the Adam Sandler cinematic classic-to-be You Don’t Mess With the Zohan.

What, you’re not soiling yourself with excitement for Sandler’s turn as an Israeli Mossad agent who longs to be a hair stylist? Yeah, me either. It’s not any particular beef I’ve got with Sandler, but even with Judd Apatow listed as a co-writer and the great John Turturro showing up for yet another supporting role, Zohan looks to be one of this summer’s most misguided movies, vying for that dubious honor with Mike Myers’ The Love Guru.

Personally, I think Sandler’s big-screen comedic aptitude peaked with his first major movie, Billy Madison (yes, it’s an orgy of crude, juvenile slapstick hijinks, but hey, who doesn’t love an orgy?), and for years now I’ve been wishing he’d just scrap the juvenile stuff and do some more worthwhile film work – his 2002 collaboration with Paul Thomas Anderson, Punch-Drunk Love, is one of my favorite movies, and proved that Sandler has what it takes to transition to “serious” roles if he were willing to make the leap.

Until that day, though, I’ll leave you with four Sandler movies that ended up being a heck of a lot better than anybody could have predicted – in the hopes that Zohan might somehow manage to bring this list up to five.

Click

It’s a Wonderful Life it ain’t, but this potentially horrific (possibly unintentional) homage to Frank Capra actually ended up being one of the most bearable – and kinda-sorta lovable – Sandler comedies of the past decade. The plot, which wouldn’t have seemed out of place on The Twilight Zone, has workaholic architect Sandler purchasing an enchanted remote control from kooky scientist Christopher Walken that allows him to control time by simply clicking its buttons. As he uses it to fast-forward the “boring” parts of his daily existence – and occasionally ogle some jiggling cleavage in slo-mo – he begins to inadvertently skip over the important moments with his kids and his wife (Kate Beckinsale, clearly the kind of girl you want to pause, not fast-forward). Mostly sacrificing huge laughs in favor of sentimentality, Click is still markedly better than the average effects-driven big-budget comedy, thanks to its occasionally inventive script and a winning Sandler performance that has his character aging almost a half-century (aided by Oscar-nominated makeup effects) over the course of the film.

Reign Over Me



I’ve never cried during an Adam Sandler flick – thought I may have shed a tear or two after having wasted eight bucks seeing Mr. Deeds – but this 2007 film, from writer/director Mike Binder, came the closest to making that happen.
Sandler, in his riskiest role to date, plays an average family man who became a withdrawn eccentric after losing his wife and daughters in the 9/11 attacks; his old dental school roommate (Don Cheadle) bumps into him one day, and takes it upon himself to reconnect with his old friend and bring him out of the depressed, lonely stupor he’s been suffering through.
Binder has a knack for character-driven films with engaging little touches of comedy (a combination he nailed in his previous film, The Upside of Anger), and Reign Over Me gets a lot of dramatic mileage out of its Cheadle/Sandler pairing without crossing the line into exploitation – an impressive feat, considering the subject matter. Had the film been released in November instead of March last year, Sandler might have even landed an award nomination or two.

Airheads



Dated as this grunge-era comedy is becoming, it’s still got laughs to spare – and features the kind of once-in-a-lifetime cast that’ll make it worth seeing no matter how painful the hairstyles are.
Sandler plays the dimwitted drummer of headbanger Brendan Fraser’s terrible hard rock trio The Lone Rangers (which also includes a very scraggly Steve Buscemi), who resort to extreme measures to get their demo tape played on the radio: they break into the radio station with plastic Uzis and hold the staff and d-bag DJ Joe Mantegna hostage. Coming off like a lighthearted cross between Wayne’s World and Die Hard (it’s even shot in the same L.A. highrise they used for the Nakatomi Plaza), Airheads offered Sandler one of his first major movie roles and surrounded him with the funniest lineup of supporting players he’s had to date – including Chris Farley, Michael McKean, Judd Nelson, Harold Ramis, and, in a particularly entertaining turn, a pre-Seinfeld, pre-career suicide Michael Richards.

Spanglish

Though Sandler’s finest performance to date can still be found in Punch-Drunk Love, he’s no slouch in this overlong but endearing culture-clash dramedy, directed by small-screen legend James L. Brooks.
Sandler plays a successful celebrity chef whose high-strung wife (Tea Leoni) has been making life difficult for him and his two kids; into their affluent household comes Mexican-born, mostly Spanish-speaking maid Flor (Paz Vega) and her daughter (Shelbie Bruce), good-hearted immigrants who gradually begin to affect their employers’ unhappy lives in some unexpected ways.
Brooks’ film is a bit messy and chaotic – sort of like real life – and Leoni’s character can be tough to take, but Sandler shines in his scenes with Vega (making her American film debut), and Spanglish manages to find some moments of real resonance in its dysfunctional but thankfully not soap-operatic portrayal of upper-class misery.

Lloyd Kaufman, the creator and head honcho of long-running indie film studio Troma Entertainment, is one of my favorite people in the entire movie industry. I wouldn't even consider myself a huge fan of his company's movies - which usually combine gleefully executed gore, T&A, and other assorted tastelessness with a tongue-in-cheek and often satirical sense of humor - but I admire him for the way he's built an entirely independent, highly successful studio without any help from the majors... and even if his empire is built mostly out of blood and boobs (and occasionally poop), it's still got more class and integrity than any of the big studios can claim.

Kauifman is also, I would assume, a pretty generous guy, as I've seen him show up for cameo roles in literally hundreds of no-budget movies just as a favor to the filmmakers - yet another way in which he sticks up for the little guys while simultaneously sticking it to The Man. And on top of all that, he's one hell of an interview subject, as this Onion AV Club piece certainly speaks to. Chatting with AV Club editor Sean O'Neil as his latest film, the zombie-chicken musical epic Poultrygeist, goes into limited theatrical release, Kaufman cracks jokes about Eric Rohmer, reminisces about his time as a Yale undergrad (I had no idea!), rags on Al Gore, and even offers a surprisingly incisive viewpoint on why movie piracy isn't such a bad thing for independent filmmakers.

It's a terrific read, and even if Poultrygeist isn't your particular cup of chicken doo-doo, you may very well find yourself feeling the same way about Kaufman that I do.

This week, everybody’s favorite multiethnic pothead duo – Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) – returns to the big screen for another reefer-laced comedic adventure courtesy of creators Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg.

I’m very happy to see H&K get the sequel treatment, not only because I’m a huge fan of the original film, but also because – back when I was a full-time Play guy – I had a chance to chat with Hurwitz and Schlossberg, who even then were dreaming of following up their inventive, borderline absurdist stoner comedy with an even more ambitious Harold and Kumar movie. The writing partners not only got that sequel made, but they also got the chance to direct it – and being exceptionally nice, smart and funny guys (if I kiss enough ass, can I get a crack at scripting part three?) the opportunity seems extremely well-deserved. Here’s the thing, though: most early reviews of Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, while surprisingly positive, have praised the film for its incisive political humor, rather than its stoner tendencies. Personally, I think it’s terrific that Hurwitz and Schlossberg have seemingly moved past the pot-and-potty jokes of the original H&K for some slightly more culturally relevant gags, but I hope that those who enjoyed the first film for its wacked-out drug humor don’t get, uh, burnt out on part two.

If you do happen to be seeking out a stoner comedy more of the shut-your-brain-off type, however, I can recommend one that’s very entertaining even if, like me, you see it stone-cold sober. Smiley Face, which played Sundance last year and is now available on dvd, is a very funny, very lightweight item from cult filmmaker Gregg Araki that just might be the ultimate pothead comedy. Why? Because moreso than any of the Cheech and Chong flicks, Dude, Where’s My Car, or even H&K, this one is almost completely plot-less, more of a stoned meander through Southern California than an actual narrative – in fact, I’m tempted to call it the "Ulysses" of pot movies, at the risk of offending lit scholars, stoners, and stoned lit scholars. At any rate, the film is a heck of a lot of fun.

Anna Faris, an actress I love to see in anything that doesn’t have the words “Scary” or “Movie” in its title, stars as Jane, a sweet but rather un-ambitious aspiring actress who’s more interested in her bed and her bong than in, you know, working. The film catches up with her one fine morning when, after a few breakfast bong hits, she scarfs a bunch of cupcakes baked by her creepy sci-fi nerd roommate Steve (That 70s Show’s Danny Masterson) and discovers not long after that the delicious treats were full of weed. Now stoned out of her mind, and with an electric bill to pay, an audition to make it to, and a plateful of pot-laced cupcakes to replace before Steve gets home, poor Jane must venture out into the world and accomplish these few otherwise simple tasks made near-impossible by the ganj-induced haze she’s stumbled her way into.

Smiley Face is Faris’s movie from frame one, and she gets to show off a wide range of comedic skills despite the fact that her character is baked beyond human comprehension – in a lesser actress’s hands, the “I’m so stoned” act would get tiresome over 80 minutes, but Faris is both endearing and very convincing as the kind of girl that occasionally gets caught up staring at the ceiling for hours at a time. The supporting cast is full of familiar faces, each one popping in and out of Jane’s misadventures for a scene or two – there’s John Krasinski, a straight-laced friend of Steve’s who drags Jane along to his dentist’s appointment; Adam Brody as a dreadlocked dealer who discusses Reaganomics and threatens to repossess Jane’s beloved pillow-top mattress if she doesn’t pay up all her unpaid pot debts; Danny Trejo and John Cho (Harold himself!) as a couple of sausage-factory employees who discover Jane passed out in the back of their truck, and so on.

The film is never anything less than silly and inconsequential, and that’s a big part of its charm – any big ideas or major twists of plot would have just gotten in the way of its lazy, breezy vibe. The ending is a bit of a misfire (and actually sort of a downer) but otherwise Smiley Face definitely earns its place near the top of the stoner-movie canon, and could really catch on as a cult favorite if the right people on the right substances happen to catch it at the right time.

Here's another late-posted Movie Match for you, this one written before Forgetting Sarah Marshall wound up getting beat at the box office by the forgettable-looking Forbidden Kingdom. If you haven't yet seen Sarah, I can't recommend it highly enough -- it definitely lives up to the hype, and will hopefully "have legs" at the box office like most of the other Judd Apatow-produced comedies have.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: producer Judd Apatow may be the current king of R-rated Hollywood comedy, but if New England’s own Peter and Bobby Farrelly hadn’t paved the way, then critically acclaimed, crowd-pleasing yukfests like Superbad, Knocked Up, and this week’s seemingly destined-for-greatness Forgetting Sarah Marshall probably never would have happened.

I’ve got no beef with Apatow or the stable of up-and-coming film comedians – like Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, and Sarah Marshall scribe/star Jason Segal – that have suddenly become mega-popular under his tutelage, but I’ll always have a soft spot for the Farrellys, whose first three films (Dumb and Dumber, Kingpin, and There’s Something About Mary), proved beyond any doubt that genuine, old-fashioned romance could share the screen with gags involving body fluids, functions, etc. Those movies, in this fan’s humble opinion, also outdo everything put out thus far by the Apatow camp in terms of sheer laughs – and this is coming from a guy who hovered dangerously close to incontinence from chuckling so hard at Superbad (if only more films could truly be called pee-your-pants funny…).

Anywho, Sarah Marshall is already netting the expected critical raves, and if it isn’t a big hit I’ll definitely be surprised. One thing, though – for some reason, every time I see the trailer for this movie, I can’t help but be reminded of last year’s misbegotten Farrellys effort The Heartbreak Kid, another sweet/gross romantic comedy set mostly (like Sarah) at a tropical vacation resort. And, unfortunately, thinking of The Heartbreak Kid makes me a little heartbroken myself, since the movie received so little love from, well, everyone.

I’m not saying that Heartbreak was perfect in any way, but the little-seen, very-little-respected film marked the Farrellys’ return to the go-for-broke adult humor that made them a household name, and even reunited them with Mary star Ben Stiller. I had high hopes for the flick, and although it promised a lot more than it delivered, I think it’s still worth catching for anyone who enjoyed their early work.

A remake of a 1972 rom-com that starred Cybill Shepherd and Charles Grodin, Heartbreak stars Ben Stiller as forty-year-old Eddie, a longtime commitment-phobe who’s never found a woman he’d be comfortable settling down with. As luck or contrivance would have it, he soon “meets cute” (to borrow a phrase from Roger Ebert) with an impossibly attractive and lovable environmental researcher named Lila (Malin Akerman) and, after a whirlwind courtship, ends up marrying her and heading off to Mexico to honeymoon.

Unfortunately for Eddie, overnight – or rather, in the course of the newlyweds’ drive down to Cabo – Lila turns from dream girl to nightmare; he discovers in short order that his new bride is a debt-ridden former raging cokehead with a deviated septum and a string of skeevy ex-boyfriends, is dangerous as a rabid animal in the sack, has some particularly unsavory flatulence issues, and perhaps worst of all, is a huge Spice Girls fan. After she contracts the nastiest sunburn in cinema history on their first day of wedded bliss, Eddie ventures off on his own at the resort – where he meets the lovely and unattached Miranda (Michelle Monaghan), who’d be a perfect woman for him to settle down with had he not already tied the knot less than 48 hours earlier.

That’s a great plot for a comedy right there, and a perfect framework on which to hang the kind of gross-out humor that has become the Farrelly trademark. Unfortunately, the film is only partially successful at mining its potential, rendering this a subpar Farrelly outing at best. Still, there’s plenty to laugh at here, from Eddie’s pervy septaugenarian father – played, of course, by Jerry Stiller – to an interlude in a pastoral Mexican village where Stiller and Monaghan pet some friendly rodents and enjoy a “Mexican Folklore Dance” that is far less culturally stimulating than it sounds.

Stiller essentially plays the same character he’s been riffing on since Mary and Flirting With Disaster, but his female co-stars really pick up the slack – Monaghan, as in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, pulls off the idealized dream-girl schtick pretty damn well, and Akerman deserves credit for being one of the most abrasive and unbearable characters I’ve ever seen in a comedy. I’m sure she’s a swell person in real life, and I look forward to seeing her in the long-awaited upcoming Watchmen movie, but based on her convincing work here I’ll bet the poor woman couldn’t get a date for months after the movie’s release (maybe in that respect it’s a good thing that this failed at the box office).

I can’t stand by this movie quite as enthusiastically as most of the others I’ve written about in this column, but with so many comedies lately seemingly getting by without a single well-executed gag, I can honestly say that The Heartbreak Kid made me laugh out loud enough times to win me over. It may not make you forget Sarah Marshall, but it’s definitely worth a look.

A bit of explanation: I am a truly lazy, unfocused, and irresponsible human being. Or, at least, I was over the past two weeks, when I completely neglected to upload any new 'Movie Match' columns to this here blog. For the sake of completeness, however, I have included both of them below, hilariously inaccurate critical/box-office predictions intact -- keep in mind that when I wrote and published these, I had no idea that, for example, 'Meet the Browns' would end up on the dreaded IMDB Bottom 100 list, or that 'Run, Fatboy, Run' would place a miserable ninth at the box office in its opening week. Stay tuned for next week's column, when I'll predict that by the time the new Indiana Jones flick rolls around, we'll all have flying cars (electric, of course) and Lindsey Lohan will have joined a convent.

MOVIE MATCH: Long before 'Drillbit Taylor,' this little movie sparked Wilson’s career

We got spoiled last fall with those few months of rock-em-sock-em great movies coming out almost nonstop; unfortunately, we’re paying for it now during the weaksauce box office season we’re enduring at the moment.

Yes, it’s truly been a pretty cruddy month at the movies, and if not for Horton Hears a Who or maybe Tyler Perry’s upcoming Meet the Browns – his flicks seem to be getting better every time around – the pickings would be pretty slim indeed. Still, I’m going to be very cautiously optimistic about this week’s release Drillbit Taylor, if only because I’m a pretty big fan of star Owen Wilson and I really like the idea of him as a washed-up mercenary protecting freshman nerds from high school bullies. Plus, the film boasts an original story by John Hughes (yes, that John Hughes) and a screenplay by comedy it-guy Seth Rogen and former Beavis and Butt-head scribe Kristofor Brown – meaning that even if the humor is crude, it ought to at least satisfy anyone who can appreciate a good pee-pee joke.

Of course, maybe I’m just being overly positive about Drillbit since I just recently caught up with Wilson’s big-screen debut, a fantastic little indie gem that launched not only his career, but also those of his brother Luke and – maybe most importantly – co-writer/director Wes Anderson. Anderson’s Bottle Rocket, co-written by none other than Owen Wilson, was made in the mid-90s and, as IMDB.com informs me, tested as negatively in early screenings as any Columbia Pictures film up to that point. Truth be told, I wasn’t entirely sold on the film when I first saw it way back when, but now I have to seriously question what those test-screening attendees missed – this flick is a riot, and a very well-made one at that.

Bottle Rocket, basically, has a setup similar to a few billion other post-Pulp Fiction 90s comedies; the difference here is that, while many other filmmakers were content to simply rip off Tarantino’s hard-to-duplicate combination of witty repartee and splattery violence, Anderson instead toned down the ugliness and upped the sentimentality, creating maybe the most heartfelt and charming movie about armed robbery ever made.

The story is about three aimless young men from Middle America who ill-fatedly attempt to start a life of crime – there’s Anthony (Luke Wilson), a former preppie college boy who suffered a nervous breakdown and just got out of a mental hospital; his knockabout buddy Dignan (Owen Wilson), who fancies himself the brains of the operation but has a lot more enthusiasm than he does actual brains; and Bob (Robert Musgrave), a meek rich kid who’s recruited to be the gang’s getaway driver because he’s the only one they know that owns a car. Their plan, which Dignan has mapped out in comically meticulous detail, is to practice on a few low-level heists in order to catch the attention of Mr. Henry (James Caan) who runs both a landscaping business and, so Dignan is convinced, a first-class heist crew.

The film moves at a pretty leisurely pace – a lot of it takes place at a rural motel where Anthony, Dignan, and Bob hide out after knocking off a bookstore – and, like Anderson’s later films, is filled with quirky little details (Bob’s last name, for example), moments of unexpected sweetness, and the kind of hilariously dysfunctional relationships that he’s still exploring in films like last year’s underrated Darjeeling Limited. That said, the filmmaking isn’t nearly as accomplished as his later work, but the seeds of greatness are definitely there; the camerawork is often inventive, the use of jangly guitar-pop on the soundtrack is perfect, and the “big robbery” finale is a hoot.

What really makes Bottle Rocket special, however, is the cast, and that’s all the more impressive since the Wilsons and Musgrave hadn’t done any film acting before – aside from the Anderson student short this film is based on. Owen is particularly impressive, fleshing out a particularly well-developed character; Dignan remains lovable even as we pity his almost infinite stupidity, and Wilson nails the dog-chasing-his-tail qualities that make him tick. Caan is also a lot of fun as a balding suburban mobster (this guy sure ain’t no Sonny Corleone), as are Lumi Cavazos, as Anthony’s non-English-speaking love interest, and future Anderson mainstay Kumar Pallana as a safecracker who looks as if he’d have trouble cracking open a soda can.

The film’s got a lot of depth for something so breezy, and also might be the most accessible thing Anderson has done to date. It’s definitely worth seeing again especially if you enjoy Wilson, or if you’re trying to remember why you used to.


MOVIE MATCH: Miss ‘The State’? Then you’ll love ‘The Ten’

Chances are, if you grew up during the 90s and watched MTV for more than just the Salt ‘N Pepa videos, you at some point caught the network’s unfortunately short-lived sketch comedy series The State.

The show was a cult favorite at best, but it offered plenty to satisfy its alternative comedy-craving fanbase – from its memorably subversive and side-splitting sketches (like "Eating Muppets" or "The Jew, the Italian, and the Red-Headed Gay") to the one semi-famous catchphrase – “I wanna dip my balls in it!” – that still, sadly, makes me laugh to this day.

The good news about The State’s long-ago demise is that the show’s alumni have gone on to some pretty impressive comedic careers. Take castmember Thomas Lennon, for instance, who splits his time between writing mega-successful Hollywood comedies like The Pacifier and Night at the Museum and appearing as Lt. Jim Dangle in the ongoing, very funny Comedy Central series Reno 911! (which co-stars his fellow Staties Kerri Kenney-Silver and Robert Ben Garant).

And then, of course, there’s Michael Ian Black, probably The State’s most recognizable graduate thanks to his ubiquitous presence on VH1’s I Love the 80s, I Love the 70s, and I Love the 90s series as well as his many commercial gigs. Like Lennon, Black has also embarked on a screenwriting career, which brings us to this week’s release Run Fatboy Run – a Black-penned tale of romance, rejection, and, um, running directed by David Schwimmer and starring Shaun of the Dead’s Simon Pegg (who co-wrote with Black). The film looks funny, and maybe even sweet, but definitely pretty mainstream considering where Black came from – and if you’re an old-school State fan like me, it’s probably not exactly what you’d hope for one of that show’s kookiest cast members to come up with.

Don’t worry, though, because I do still have a movie for you. The Ten, released last year, is probably the closest thing to an actual State movie we’ll ever see; it’s a sketch-comedy anthology film featuring ten interlinked vignettes, each of which takes on one of the Ten Commandments. Writer/director David Wain is yet another veteran of the show – he’s also the guy behind the cult-fave summer camp comedy Wet Hot American Summer – and the film’s cast is split between State alums (Black, Kenney-Silver, and Ken Marino, for starters) and surprisingly big-name actors like Live Schrieber, Gretchen Mol, Wynona Ryder, and Adam Brody.

Like just about all sketch-comedy movies, The Ten is hit-and-miss, but the comedy is pretty bizarre and clever throughout, even when it’s not laugh-out-loud funny. Skits include a foreign-film parody about an American librarian (Mol) who has a very unusual sexual and spiritual awakening while vacationing in Mexico; a rather creepy tale about a newlywed (Winona Ryder) who falls head over heels for a ventriloquist’s dummy; a “false idol” story about a skydiving accident survivor (Brody) who becomes a national celebrity; and even a raunchy animated segment about an untrustworthy rhino and some deviant wiener dogs. The segments are linked by a framing story in which Paul Rudd introduces all the various commandments, though he gets increasingly tripped up by falling in and out of love with Famke Janssen and Jessica Alba (Moses never had it so tough).

As is probably obvious, Wain’s sense of humor hasn’t really changed much since his television days, and while The Ten isn’t too over-the-top in its outrageousness, the freedom of the R rating gives him the chance to get away with some things that even MTV would have balked at (i.e. the dummy sex scene). It’s a lot of fun seeing performers like Ryder and Schreiber let their guard down to embrace the film’s State-style absurdity, and there are at least three or four sketches on display here that rank with the show’s best material – the final one, involving the commandment about keeping the Sabbath day holy, is an absolute riot.

If nothing else, The Ten ought to tide State fans over until MTV finally releases the full-series DVD set they’ve been promising for years. It was a comedy series that, like its contemporaries Mr. Show and The Ben Stiller Show, never got the appreciation it deserved, but did at least launch the careers of some very funny people – and I, for one, am happy to see them working to keep the show’s spirit alive.

Let me quickly put one thing out there, and you can feel free to agree or disagree: Will Ferrell is an incredibly funny guy.

I know, he has his detractors. But, if you think about it, all the great screen comedians – the Marx Brothers, Jerry Lewis, Chevy Chase, uh, Rob Schneider – had ‘em, too, and that didn’t stop any of them (well, maybe Schneider) from still doing everything in their power to make people laugh, even if some folks just simply refused to ever find them funny. There’s an art to what guys like Ferrell do, and of everyone working in comedy today, he’s one of the most charismatic and naturally talented guys out there.

Of course, that’s just my opinion, but it’s one that I stand behind without hesitation – the still-funny SNL “cowbell” sketch and the entire movie Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy have made me laugh as hard as anything I’ve ever seen. And this week, I’m very much looking forward to catching Ferrell in Semi-Pro, which is looking more and more like an R-rated throwback to the great raunchy sports comedies of yore – a Slap Shot or Longest Yard for our generation, but with more bear-wrestling and orgy gags. Chances are it won’t live up to those classics, but if the raunchy-sports-comedy genre has taught me anything over the years, it’s that a beer-guzzling underachiever like me can dream, at least, can’t he?

One thing the film has in its favor is that Ferrell is a sports-comedy veteran by now, having taken on everything from NASCAR racing to figure skating in the last couple of years. My favorite Ferrell sports comedy, however, is a movie that had no business being as entertaining as it was: the formulaic and derivative, yet somehow still hilarious, PG soccer comedy Kicking and Screaming.

Executive produced by Judd Apatow – before he was quite the movie-comedy wunderkind he’s become – the movie wraps a pile of bad news kiddie sports comedy clichés around some choice Ferrell bits aimed squarely at his adult audience. It’s ostensibly a family film, and there is plenty in it for the elementary school set to enjoy, but its sense of humor is ruder and more in line with Ferrell’s SNL/Funny or Die-type material than you’d ever expect. And, hey, it’s got Mike Ditka in a supporting role – you can’t not love that.

Ferrell stars as a pushover family man whose father (Robert Duvall, enjoyably slumming it) is one of those hardass, uber-competitive guys who’s made life a living hell for his never-good-enough son. Ferrell’s own young son Sam (Dylan McLaughlin) warms the bench on the undefeated peewee soccer team his grandpa coaches; tired of seeing his boy suffer the same athletic humiliations his father inflicted on him, Ferrell ends up coaching Sam when he’s traded to a ragtag, last-place team.

The tykes on the team are cute enough, and cover all the usual kiddie sports flick clichés (you know, the fat kid, the diminutive Asian kid, etc.), but Kicking and Screaming is savvy in the way it shifts its focus to Ferrell, who starts out as one of those “winning isn’t everything” kind of guys, then gets nastier and more competitive as the film goes on – at one point, he even flips out on Ditka (playing himself, as Ferrell’s celebrity assistant coach) in a rant about juiceboxes that’s easily the highlight of the movie.

The plot grunts and strains under the weight of its well-worn premise – you just know Ferrell’s team and Duvall’s are going to meet up for the “big game” in act three – but it’s the unexpected edges (like the caffeine addiction Ferrell’s character develops after Ditka buys him his first-ever cup of coffee) that make it a lot more fun than it should be. I’ve got to give Duvall some props, too, since he rarely appears in anything this frivolous – unlike his Godfather co-star James Caan – but seems to have a blast playing a pompous jerk that makes his browbeating character from The Great Santini seem like a pretty easygoing guy.

If, essentially, Kicking and Screaming is nothing but a Bad News Bears remake with a wackier star and a touch more political correctness, then so be it – again, it’s funnier than it has any right to be, and works best as a vehicle for Ferrell to explore his various forms of inspired goofiness.

If you hate the guy, this isn’t the movie that’s going to warm you up to him (try Stranger Than Fiction for that), but if you feel the same way I do, the laughs are definitely there.

Ever since I first saw his Goldilocks-inspired music video for Bjork’s "Human Behavior," I knew that Michel Gondry was a filmmaker I had to keep an eye on.

I'm happy to say that, in the fifteen (!) years since he unleashed that visually daring, ingeniously funny, and just-a-touch creepy five-minute clip on an unsuspecting public, Gondry hasn’t disappointed me once. His feature films – and you knew right away that he’d eventually earn the status to be able to make some – are some of the most inventive comedies I’ve ever seen, from the zany and way too little-seen Human Nature to the more emotionally powerful (though still pretty damn funny) Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep.

So I can forgive the guy if he seems to be regressing a bit with this week’s Be Kind Rewind, maybe his most mainstream movie to date – especially since it stars the ever-reliable Jack Black and Mos Def, and features a premise so totally, ridiculously goofy that you’ve just got to appreciate it (it involves Black and Mos making half-assed low-budget versions of all the blockbusters at Mos’s video store, after Black accidentally becomes magnetized and erases all his tapes).

Both a paean to the fondly remembered VHS era (isn’t it sad that our kids will never know the joyful torture of rewinding a two-hour-plus tape or “adjusting the tracking” on the VCR) and an excuse for Gondry to gently lampoon some of our favorite movies, it ought to be a blast. What’s also pretty cool about the film is that it reunites Gondry with rapper/actor Mos Def, who previously appeared in the director’s concert documentary Dave Chappelle’s Block Party.

Made at the height of Chappelle’s popularity in 2004, Block Party was intended not only as a hip-hop concert doc – featuring acts like The Roots, Kanye West, Erykah Badu, Talib Kweli, and the briefly reunited Fugees – but also as the comedian’s attempt to reconnect with the regular folks after two tv seasons of being uncomfortably super-famous. Being that it was a free concert for everyone who attended – and that Chappelle, who pops in for comedy bits here and there, seems like he’s having the time of his life throughout – he seems to have been pretty successful on both fronts.

As a film, Block Party is a little bit scattershot, but fun and energetic nonetheless. Along with performance footage from the Block Party, we get to see Dave inviting some clueless Ohioans to join him in Brooklyn Bed-Stuy neighborhood for the show; some relaxed backstage moments where he talks and jokes and even plays some music with the assembled performers; even a tour of the reclaimed warehouse adjacent to the concert site, owned by a pair of friendly, highly eccentric old hippies who are happy to show Chappelle around (though we never do get to meet the pet cheetah they claim to have in there).

The actual performance footage is top-notch, though Gondry cuts away from the stage more than some hardcore fans might like him to. Still, there are some pretty powerful musical moments here – from Kanye West performing "Jesus Walks" with a college marching band backing him up to a politically charged bout of wordplay from the underappreciated Dead Prez – and they’re all capped off with Lauryn Hill’s breathtaking rendition of the Fugees’ signature cover "Killing Me Softly" (maybe worth seeing the movie for in itself).

One of the things Gondry really nails is capturing Chappelle’s personality – though the comedian’s goofy side always shines through (dude sure can tell a yo’ momma joke), you really get the sense after seeing Block Party that he’s a true man of the people; late in the film, he calls the concert the best day of his career, and it’s hard not to believe him. Block Party, of course, was made before Chappelle famously abandoned his Comedy Central series and fled to Africa to get out of the limelight, and it’s a further reminder of how talented he was before he essentially retreated from the public eye for good – though I still hold out hope for another sketch comedy series somewhere down the line.

At any rate, Block Party is a great little concert movie, and it’s also proof that Gondry’s got a lot more up his sleeve than quirky, visually dazzling comedies. As always, I can’t want to see what he does next.

As much an appreciator of “serious” filmmaking as I am, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with movies that are silly just for silly’s sake – and I really respect actors that aren’t so self-important that they refuse to appear in those kinds of things.

So, this week, I raise my popcorn to Mr. Steve Zahn, a truly talented performer who has never seemed to mind being one of the best comic relief guys in the business. Though Zahn did have a more serious role last year in Werner Herzog’s Rescue Dawn – and he deserved it – I’m looking forward to seeing him this Friday in Strange Wilderness, a wildlife-themed stoner comedy from the entertainingly juvenile folks at Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison Productions. The film, a raunchy, R-rated effort about a low-rent nature show host and his crew’s last-ditch attempt to capture a real-life Sasquatch, is probably going to get savaged by the critics, but fans of pure, unadulterated silliness should find plenty to enjoy.

The same could also be said of 1998’s Safe Men, a silly-with-a-capital-S heist comedy in which Zahn starred alongside Sam Rockwell – another fine actor who isn’t afraid to make an ass out of himself onscreen every once in a while. The film was instrumental in launching the career of writer/director John Hamburg (who went on to co-script both of the insanely profitable Meet the Parents movies), but mostly it’s just a good-natured goof that breezes by, earns a few big laughs, and quickly goes on its merry way – and, honestly, I find something very refreshing about that.

Zahn and Rockwell are Eddie and Sam, a comically terrible lounge act playing humiliating gigs for unappreciative audiences of all kinds. Sam is convinced that the duo is destined to be their generation’s Simon and Garfunkel; meanwhile, Eddie – whose estranged father, we learn, was a career criminal – is getting more and more discouraged by their increasingly pathetic attempt at having a musical career (Sam, he complains, can’t even be bothered to learn the lyrics to their songs).

Enter Veal Chop (Giamatti), a tackily dressed underling for “Big Fat” Bernie Gayle (Michael Lerner), one of the two Jewish crime bosses in Providence (and don’t think we won’t eventually get to meet the other one). “Da Chop,” as he calls himself, mistakes Sam and Eddie for the pair of professional safecrackers (Mark Ruffalo and Josh Pais) his boss is looking to hire for some robberies he’s planning, and soon the boys find themselves forced to put their song-and-dance routine on hold while they unsuccessfully pose as crooks.

Eventually, they cross paths with Goodstuff Leo (Harvey Fierstein), Big Fat Bernie’s arch-nemesis; Sam falls for Leo’s daughter (Christina Kirk), whom he embarrassingly bumps into while he and Eddie try to rob her house; and, finally, the whole ridiculous affair draws to a close at Big Fat Bernie Jr.’s bar mitzvah.

Safe Men’s charm is in its lighthearted, self-consciously wacky sense of humor; this is the kind of movie that assumes things like Casio keytars, Zubaz pants, and sledgehammer-wielding little people will automatically be funny, and for the most part is correct. And although the plot might sound perfect for a Coen Brothers-style black comedy, but there’s nothing remotely dark about this one – if the movie is to be believed, then Jewish gangsters from Providence are some of the nicest folks you’ll ever meet.

The gags, though hardly elaborate, come fast and furious, and connect surprisingly often – there’s a running joke involving the diminutive size of Rockwell’s ass, and the all-too-conspicuous padding he wears to bulk it up; Fierstein spends a good five minutes of screen time delivering a (hilarious) monologue about flammable women’s slacks; and even Ruffalo, who’d go on to be a fine dramatic actor, gets to take part in a super-obvious but still pretty damn funny spoof of Say Anything.

Zahn fans might be a little disappointed that he plays straight man to Rockwell (whose character seems to be borrowing Jim Carrey’s mop-top from Dumb and Dumber), but he’s still a lot of fun – as is Giamatti, another respected dramatic actor whose whitebread thug character steals nearly every scene he’s in.

Overall, if there’s anything to be learned from Safe Men, it’s that most movie comedies take themselves way too seriously, trying to advance feel-good messages or photograph their stars in the most attractive light possible while forgetting that their main reason for existing is to make people laugh. This movie doesn’t have a single other thing on its mind, and for that, you’ve got to give it credit.