In praise/defense of The Haunting In Connecticut.

I have nothing but envy for those critics who got more out of Mama than I did.  But I do take issue with a certain thread that pops up in many of the more positive reviews, the idea that is somehow the first mainstream horror movie in forever to actually have three-dimensional human beings at its core.  To be frank, I think the prestige associated with producer Guillermo Del Toro and star Jessica Chastain has caused certain critics not so much to overpraise the film but to assign it undue credit in terms of presenting a humanistic horror film.  Just as each new 007 film sees cries of 'most feminist Bond girl ever!', I think at least some of the praise being heaped on Mama is perhaps selective amnesia in terms of the oft-derided horror genre.  For a prime example of a horror film that exists as a character drama first and a horror film second, one need only look at a film that's receiving a somewhat under-the-radar sequel this Friday, possibly tonight in certain theaters.  I'm talking of course about The Haunting In Connecticut.

Review: A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas 3D (2011) again proves that the first film's brilliance was a fluke.

A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas 3D
2011
90 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle is arguably the best comedy of the prior decade.  It's laugh-out-loud funny, but also filled with intelligent characters engaging in outlandish, but almost-plausible adventures in search of a most simple pleasure (a hamburger).  It was crude, but not stupid about its raunch, and it created a wonderful 'this is America' tapestry that helped make it one of the finest films about race/ethnicity relations in modern cinema. Harold and Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay is every bit as lousy as most of us expected the first film to be.  It's aimless, painfully unfunny, openly stupid, and trading in the sort of stock storytelling conventions ("Oh, that girl I dated for a few months in college is THE ONE who I must win back!") that the original avoided.  More importantly, it's outright immoral in how it claims political topicality but sells the three biggest post-9/11 lies around (there are no innocent men in Gitmo, the post 9/11 abuses are the result of a few bad apples, and George W. Bush is really just 'one of us').  For better or worse, A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas isn't as offensive as the first sequel, but it's still a shockingly lazy, uninspired affair.  It feels cheap and constrained, with only a handful of laughs and a narrative that sees fit to mostly replicate jokes from the first film.  It's not as aggressively bad as the first sequel, but mere mediocrity is not something to aspire to.

A Very Harold and Kumar Christmas gets a red-band trailer.

While this is just a touch spoilery, it does seem to be an improvement over the wretched second picture.  It's obvious that this franchise is going ever-more surreal, leaving behind the quasi-realism (stoned jaguars aside) of the first film.  One thing that does impress me is the continued presence of Paula Garcés.  She was basically Harold's 'prize to be won' in the first film, while she barely merited a cameo in the second, yet she again appears here, apparently now as Harold's wife.  In an age when male-centric franchises treat their female characters like disposables to be replaced by the newest flavor of the month in the next installment, it is refreshing that this series has bothered to maintain continuity (the Kumar's would-be love interest from Escape From Guantanamo Bay, Danneel Ackles, also makes a return appearance).  But on a different note, not only is Christopher Meloni apparently absent from this go-around, but his identical twin Elias Koteas is listed on the IMDB cast page as "Sergei Katsov".  Me thinks that Meloni was unavailable so the producers went for the logical replacement.  Anyway, this one drops on November 4th, and I can't imagine it will be worse than the first sequel, although hoping for something as brilliant as the initial installment is a fool's errand.

Scott Mendelson