Tag: immigrants

ABOUT MY FATHER – Review

Sebastian Maniscalco as Sebastian and Robert De Niro as Salvo in About My Father. Photo Credit: Dan Anderson. Courtesy of Lionsgate

Comedian Sebastian Maniscalco plays a man named Sebastian Maniscalco while Robert De Niro plays his father Salvo, in the comedy ABOUT MY FATHER. Maniscalco and De Niro as father and son are the major delight in this otherwise mildly funny, warm-hearted comedy. It is a comedy about family but not really a family comedy as there are bits of adult humor.

Dad Salvo (De Niro) is a hairstylist (don’t call him a barber!) from a long line of hardworking, hard-scrabble, stoop-postured, Sicilian scowlers, but Salvo left Sicily to immigrate to America to give his son a better life. However, his second-generation Italian-American son has fallen for someone who is not a fellow Italian-American – an artist named Ellie (Leslie Bibb) whose immigrants ancestors came over a little earlier – on the Mayflower. When Sebastian is invited to her family’s big 4th of July weekend celebration at her parents’ posh estate, Salvo, a widower who served in the U.S. military, objects to being left alone on a holiday that means so much to him. But soon-to-be fiancee Ellie has the solution: invite Dad too – which sends Sebastian into a panic at the thought of his opinionated grumbler father coming along for a weekend where Sebastian hopes to impress Ellie’s family. Actually dad Salvo is cool to the idea after first too, not wanting to spend an uncomfortable weekend with the idle rich he disapproves of. But when son Sebastian tells him he intends to propose to Ellie and asks his father for the treasured family ring as her engagement ring, Salvo decides he has come along and determine if her rich family measures up to his standards, which include hard-work, penny-pinching and family-first values.

You get the idea. Father and son are at odds in a fish-out-of-water comedy about working-family guys in the land of the country club. But rather than jokes built around working class Italian Americans or immigrants trying to impress the posh family, ABOUT MY FATHER turns the tables on that old premise of a meet-the-family comedy, and instead pokes fun at the foibles of the very rich. It is still humor built on stereotypes but now it is stereotypes about the pampered, clueless rich who are the target. The comic situation pits father against son and vice versa, with Maniscalco’s character hoping to use the weekend to charm and fit in with his future in-laws, while De Niro sizes up their worthiness to join his family, while grumbles his way through it and disdaining what he considers unacceptable behavior, like ordering off a menu with no prices and keeping peacocks as pets.

Yeah, pretty silly, but there is a little fun in inverting the script for this kind of meet-the-family comedy. Sebastian’s artist girlfriend is more down-to-earth than her family but her quirky, moneyed relatives provide plenty of fodder for comedy, mostly built on familiar stereotypes. Kim Cattrall plays her mom, Tigger McAuthur Collins (yes, Tigger, as in the Winnie the Pooh stories), who is a U.S. Senator. Tigger is just as energetic her namesake but she is also strong-willed, exacting powerhouse. Dad Bill Collins, from an old money family, is a more easy-going personality, but he is also a successful businessman who inherited control of his family’s large, storied luxury hotel chain, which is the big-dog competitor to the rising-star boutique hotel that Sebastian owns and runs. Ellie’s two brothers are their own kinds of messes – Lucky (Anders Holm) is a big-ego screw-up in preppy attire who works for his father, while Doug (Brett Dier) is a sensitive soul dressed in organic fabrics who greets the guests by playing singing bowls and who is generally ignored. Oddly, there is no family member named Tom Collins. How did they miss that one?

Maniscalco and De Niro together are the major highlight and reason to see this light little comedy. As stubborn father and wheedling son, they are a delight together and sometimes even hilarious. De Niro gets to scowl all he wants while Maniscalco does his comedy routine while bouncing off walls in frustration. The supporting cast do well, with Kim Cattrall a stand-out as the blue-blooded, imperious, control-freak Tigger, followed closely by David Rasche as husband Bill who smooths over the ruffled feathers.

Sebastian Maniscalco co-wrote the script and it draws on his stand-up humor enough that it should please fans. The turnabout script is kind of fun, and there are some laughs in there with jokes about loud striped shirts, men in pastel pants, country clubs and peacocks, and jokes aimed at the rich and powerful. But there are also some rather cringe-worthy comedy bits, like one about lost swim trunks, that go on too long.

Otherwise, the humor is light, the plot slight, with a nice little message about the importance of family. This comedy is more mildly funny than laugh out loud but Maniscalco and De Niro are appealing together.

ABOUT MY FATHER opens Friday, May 26, in theaters.

RATING: 2.5 out of 4 stars

LES MISERABLES (2019) – Review

Oh, oh. Didn’t we just endure another retelling of this classic story? And in song this last time? With an actor or two not known for their (to put it gently) pipes? No, it’s the same title, but put that flick out of your head. Along with countless 19th-century costume epics. So we’re not dealing with the stealing of baked goods and a hungry waif and dogged inspectors. Although this film does concern itself with poverty and law enforcement. But there’s class struggle and culture clashes between disenfranchised immigrants. Plus there are some trigger-happy thugs engaged in racial profiling. You may think those problems have only plagued our backyard, but it’s going on all over the globe, in this film and the original novel’s backdrop. This is a very modern-day melodrama that is also titled LES MISERABLES.

The story actually begins on a somewhat high note as throngs pack the streets of Paris to revel in the latest soccer tournaments. The cafes outside the stadium are filled with fans from every class, including some teens from the slum districts. The police precinct that handles that area gets a new addition from the “sticks”. Ruiz (Damien Bonnard), who has moved to the city in order to be closer to his son (his ex has just relocated there). He’s paired with two veterans, hair-trigger Chris (Alexis Manenti) and the more laid-back Gwada (Djibril Zonga) to patrol that low-income housing district of Montfermeil, which just happens to be the area where Victor Hugo wrote the famous title work. It’s there we meet one of the aimless preteens, Buzz (Al-Hassan Ly) who is obsessed with his new drone (which records the neighbor girls as they dress). He’s a minor nuisance compared to the main troublemaker Issa (Issa Perica), who instigates most bits of vandalism and disobedience. The increasingly powerful Muslim brotherhood tries to “clamp down” on them, along with the area’s self-proclaimed “mayor” (Steve Tientcheu), a low-level druglord. The police trio happens upon a heated “blow-up” between him and a gypsy family that runs a ragtag circus. Their baby lion cub has been stolen and its owner threatens retaliation. Ruiz gets them to agree to a deadline for the police to recover the animal. Scouring social media, they trace the cub to Issa. When the trio confronts him at a playground, tensions escalate and Gwada accidentally shoots Issa in the face with his “non-lethal” rubber ball air-rifle. As his friends attack, the men scoop up Issa and try to tend to his wounds (questions at the hospital would be a problem). It’s then that they notice a drone (yes, it’s Buzz) has filmed everything. The men must keep the boy alive and track down Buzz to retrieve the video card before he gives it to the press or posts it online, otherwise, the resulting outrage could engulf the whole city in violence.

First-time feature director Ladj Ly confidently blends several subplots and moods to create a masterful commentary on life in this new century, thanks to the thought-provoking script he co-wrote with actor Manenti and Giordano Gerderlini. The unifying story of Ruiz echos the newbie thrown into the calamity story of TRAINING DAY and COLORS, especially in his relationship with his “guides”. Bonnard has a compelling dignity as Ruiz who wants to try and give everyone the benefit of doubt. This is immediately in conflict with Chris who Manenti plays as a most destructive loose cannon with no empathy or filter. And of course, he easily gives in to his baser instincts, especially when he decides to aggressively harass some teenage women, as Ruiz does his best to disarm this predator with a badge. Zonga seems to act as a buffer as he tries to get between the two men, although he can do little to reign in Chris’s antics. It’s not until he’s along with Ruiz for a post-shift drink that he reveals his real anger and cynicism. Also making an impression is the imposing Almamy Kanoute as Salah whose Middle-Eastern themed diner becomes a DMZ or sanctuary amongst the mounting tension. That best sums up the overwhelming mood of the film since nearly every moment is a potential pressure cooker ready to shoot out scalding steam. That may be best represented by Perica’s heart-wrenching work as Issa, a “bad boy” who is capable of tenderness (especially with the snatched lion Johnny), but his fate in these battleground blocks literally have him up against the wall. In the film’s final moments his psyche reflects the painful scars inflicted by those who should have protected him. He’s now become a dead-eyed monster whose humanity has been erased by this trauma, a symbol to those “thrown away” by the adults. This powerful dramatic thriller shows us that these modern victims of poverty, the hooded, masked hundreds of LES MISERABLES, are just as tragic and doomed as those in Hugo’s masterwork.

3 out of 4

LES MISERABLES opens everywhere and screens exclusively in the St. Louis area at landmark’s Tivoli Theatre

YARDIE – Review

Ami Ameen as D, in Idris Elba’s directorial debut, the Jamaican-British crime thriller YARDIE. Photo courtesy of Rialto Pictures

Actor Idris Elba makes his directing debut with YARDIE, a tale about a young Jamaican, haunted by his DJ brother’s murder, who makes his way to London in the employ of a Kingston-based gang boss.

“Yardie” is slang for Jamaican gang members, a term the pops up on the streets of the London’s Hackney neighborhood, home to large Jamaican immigrant community. It is where D (Ami Ameen) finds himself after his boss King Fox (Sheldon Shepherd) sends him to London to deliver a package of drugs to Rico (Stephen Graham), a fuzzy-haired, white Jamaican under-boss.

But the story really starts years earlier in Jamaica, where 10-year-old Dennis (Antwayne Eccleston), who goes by the nickname D., lives just outside Kingston with his older brother, a street DJ known as Jerry Dread (Everaldo Creary). When D witnesses the murder of his beloved brother, while Jerry is trying to bring peace between two warring Kingston gangs, the trauma of that loss haunts him. He grows up under the care of gang leader King Fox yet D remains obsessed with getting revenge on his brother’s killer, another young boy named Clancy.

In London, where the majority of the story takes place, things quickly go wrong between D and Rico, and the young Jamaican finds himself loose in London’s Hackney neighborhood. He decides to seek out his childhood sweetheart Yvonne (Shantol Jackson), who moved there to raise their young daughter and give her a better life.

Dividing the story between the two places reflects many immigrant experiences, of coming to a strange land for an new chance in life, something with which the London-raised Elba could identify. YARDIE follows a familiar plot about vengeance and immigrant dreams but its major strength lies in the distinctive flavor of Jamaican culture that fills it. Based on a 1980s bestseller by Victor Headley, the story is set in the overlapping worlds of Jamaican drug syndicates and its music industry. While D works for a drug lord, his heart is really with the music.

One of YARDIE’s delights is its score, filled with Jamaican music, none of which is by Bob Marley, although there is one by his grandson Skip Marley. The film immerses the audience in Jamaican culture, and director Elba makes the most of that, adding interesting locations and clever camera angles to charm the audience. The “good boy drawn to the dark side” story is a serviceable crowd-pleaser but it is built around a “mystery” we figure out long before the protagonist. A stronger script would have been nice but it gives Elba enough to get his directorial start on, and it’s positive message about Jamaican immigrants overcoming is pleasing enough, if only mildly entertaining.

The acting is good but not particularly remarkable. The only recognizable face is Graham, who appeared in supporting roles in several Guy Ritchie films, usually as a comic criminal. He’s a criminal in this one too but much less comic.

Idris Elba does some interesting things with his camera and the backdrop of life in Jamaican and on poor London streets are evocative and immersive. A stronger story could have made better use of the atmosphere of authenticity Elba creates, but it is only fitfully engaging as a thriller. Likewise, the cast, even the attractive leads, are not able to add enough emotional depth and subtext to make up for what is missing in the script.

However, the story is a crowd-pleaser, even if it is predictable, and will leave audiences with a nice little taste of Jamaican culture.

YARDIE opens Friday, March 15, at Landmark’s Tivoli Theater.

RATING: 3 1/2 out of 5 stars