Comedies from Epic to Intimate: The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming, How to Steal a Million, The Puffy Chair

The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming, by Norman Jewison, 1966

Back in the 60's, it seems like they were trying to kick off a new subgenre: comedy epics.  That's a pretty tall order.  Most of the best comedies are short and smaller in scale, packing in the laughs and getting out without wearing out their welcome, and keeping the focus on a few main characters.  Norman Jewison's Best Picture nominated Cold War comedy, The Russians are Coming, the Russians are Coming has a great premise and starts off strong, but ultimately collapses under its own massive weight.

A Soviet submarine gets grounded just off the coast of a small New England island.  A group of men (led by Alan Arkin in his movie debut) are sent out to find a boat to get themselves unstuck.  They soon cross paths with a local family (Carl Reiner, Eva Marie Saint, and a couple of kids) who become unwilling participants in their plan.  Eventually, word spreads, and through a huge game of telephone, the word is that a Soviet Invasion is imminent and the entire town is into a panic and forms a mob.

Norman Jewison is a very good filmmaker (see the excellent original The Thomas Crown Affair), and 'Russians' was skillfully made, but it was just too big and too long.  It had all these wacky townsfolk, like Jonathan Winters as the police chief, and an unnecessary love story thrown in between a Russian and an American girl.  The delivery of the film's message of peace and unity between the USA and Russia is done in an overly sentimental way.  The best parts of the movie were the scenes between Reiner and his family, and Arkin and his men.  I loved Reiner's insecurity, as his manhood is questioned through his son's disappointment that he didn't shoot anybody.

There was a great, smaller movie to be found in there, with the exact same message, and without all the setpieces and stunts and mob scenes and superfluous characters.  I'm not opposed to the epic comedy, Blues Brothers is amazing, even at 2 1/2 hours, but it also has lots of great music and action to ease the lulls in between the laughs.  This movie has some very good moments, and might be worth checking out sometime for Reiner and Arkin's performances alone, but I wouldn't go too far out of my way to see it, if I were you.

How to Steal a Million, by William Wyler, 1966

I don't know how this happened, but until I saw How to Steal a Million, the only William Wyler film I'd seen was Ben-Hur.  Well, Ben-Hur is Ben-Hur, but this is pretty good, too.  It's a whole lot of fun and really smart.

As the title suggests, How to Steal a Million is a heist movie, a romantic heist comedy to be exact.  It stars Audrey Hepburn as Nicole, a (gasp!) wealthy socialite, whose rich father, sweetheart though he is, earned all his money as a master art forger.  It's a family trade.  Nicole meets an art thief (Peter O'Toole) who has broken into her home and smooth talks her into driving him back to his own place.  When she finds out that a statue forged by her grandfather on loan to a museum is about to undergo an inspection, Nicole recruits the thief into helping her plan a heist of the statue in order to prevent her father from being exposed as a fraud.  Then they fall in love.

How to Steal a Million is clever, funny, has a great script, and good performances by all the leads.  Peter O'Toole is especially awesome as the suave art thief, Simon, and he has great chemistry with Hepburn.  The heist is really well put together, and involves simple but effective tactics like throwing a boomerang to trip an alarm.  There's a great twist toward the end that I didn't see coming at all.  I love a good heist movie, and How to Steal a Million more than qualifies.

The Puffy Chair, by The Duplass Brothers, 2005

I think I've gone on record on this blog in saying that I really like what the Duplass Brothers do.  They make these intimate, emotional comedies, that focus way more on character than plot or set pieces.  I dug the hell out of Cyrus, Jeff, Who Lives at Home, and Safety Not Guaranteed (which they produced but didn't write and direct).

The Puffy Chair is Mark and Jay Duplass' first film, made for a microbudget, with heavily improvised dialogue.  I guess it's considered a part of the "Mumblecore" movement, but I don't really have much of an understanding of what that means.  There's not really any mumbling in this.  It stars Mark Duplass and Katie Aselton as a couple in a doomed relationship who, along with his deadbeat brother, drive across the country to deliver a vintage chair that is an exact replica of the one in their house growing up to their father for his birthday.  And you know, things happen on the way, like road trip movie things.  And relationship things.

I actually like these guys better now that they mix more comedy into their movies, but you can see the beginnings of their style and humor taking root in The Puffy Chair.  There's a hilarious and uncomfortable sequence where Mark Duplass tries to sneak his girlfriend into a cheap motel room.  It goes wrong in a painfully realistic manner. 

The Puffy Chair is worth looking into if you're a fan of the Duplass Brothers' other films, but if Jason Segel or Jonah Hill are your reasons for watching those, you should probably look elsewhere.  Though, I guess if you're a fan of The League, you might be interested in this, since Duplass and Aselton are stars of that show.  As epic and expensive as The Russians are Coming, The Russians are Coming was, The Puffy Chair is the complete opposite, and I definitely prefer my comedies better this way. 

Jeff, Who Lives at Home

Jeff, Who Lives at home had me at the very first scene, where the title character, played by Jason Segel, professes his undying love for the M. Night Shyamalan movie, Signs. He explains that the family in the movie, though somewhat broken by personal tragedy, manages to fend off an alien invasion, by realizing that every odd thing in their lives has been building up to this one perfect moment.

Jeff has also suffered from a personal tragedy: his father died when he was a teen, and since then he's been in a holding pattern. He lives with his mother (Susan Sarandon), and spends his days watching TV and getting high in the basement, just waiting for the sign that will lead him to his own one perfect moment.

The story kicks into gear when Jeff gets a wrong number call for a guy named Kevin. Sent on an errand by his mother, he goes out, but is distracted into following a guy with the name Kevin on his basketball Jersey. Jeff continues following his "Signs", as they lead him to his brother Pat (Ed Helms), who is a bit of a tool, blissfully unaware that his marriage is falling apart. Meanwhile, Jeff's mother, Sharon, bored and depressed with her work situation and family life, is engaged in the excitement of an unconventional office romance.

The stories don't seem to fit together at first, but things coalesce as events hurtle their way to the big moment the demands of the plot promise to Jeff at the end of the movie.

I think Jeff, Who Lives at Home is very likely the best dramedy inspired by an M. Night Shyamalan movie ever made. Jason Segel is wonderful as Jeff. Even though he's a bit of a loser, you sympathize with him because he's trusting, hopeful, and perceptive. And though it's usually Ed Helms job to play that naive, open-hearted guy, this time around he gets to play a bit of a different character. He thinks buying an expensive new car that he can't afford will solve all of life's problems and maybe give him the social status he's not getting from being a paint company sales rep. Judy Greer plays his wife, and she's great as always. She keeps doing all these great supporting roles and getting none of the attention she deserves.

I'm really interested in the way Jay and Mark Duplass, the brothers who wrote and directed the movie, have been evolving. I just found out about them last year, through their previous movie, Cyrus, which I also enjoyed. It appears that with each movie, they're getting bigger and more ambitious than the last. I like that they're casting these great comedy actors and putting them in roles that encourage them to stretch. I also like seeing comedies that have more to them than laughs.

In addition to all that praise, Jeff, Who Lives at Home just made me happy. It was earnest and free of cynicism and uplifting, without ever seeming forced or cloying. It's not like one of those schmaltzy 90's Robin William movies; it really means what it says. There aren't too many movies like this, so check it out if you can!