RV
An overworked executive, Bob Munro (Robin Williams), persuades his wife, Jamie (Cheryl Hines), and children to give up their Hawaiian vacation for some “family bonding” on a cross-country RV trip. But it’s all a ruse. Bob has other, more career-oriented reasons on his mind than spending quality time with his family in the Rocky Mountains. Through a series of misadventures Bob inadvertently learns the true meaning of family.
QuickTime Trailers.
posted by Ronnie Rocket @ 4:21 AM
1 Comments
1 Comments:
The family road trip: What better way to bring the entire family together so that they might realize that all the problems they have at home are in fact infinitely worse when confined to a small space and bereft of the comforts of home? In Barry Sonnenfeld's RV, Robin Williams plays Bob Munro, an overworked-but-loving dad whose corporate job with an extreme soda company is looking a little perilous. A potential merger requires Bob's presence at a meeting in Colorado … during a period of time that's already been staked out for Bob to take his wife Jamie (Cheryl Hines), daughter Cassie (Joanna Levesque) and son Carl (Josh Hutcheson) to Hawaii. Bob's boss Todd tells him to be there or his career's pretty much over, so Bob does what any lead character in a so-so comedy would do to kickstart the plot: He lies, telling his family that instead of Hawaii, they're all going to be together and close on a trip to the beautiful spaces near Colorado in the leviathan recreational vehicle he's rented for them.
RV is a modern big-studio comedy, so the question is not if there are poop jokes in the film (which there are), but rather if the poop jokes are semi-tasteful and even vaguely artfully constructed (which they are). Sonnenfeld's been busy as of late directing big-budget, large-scale, special-effects laden films like the Men in Black movies and Wild Wild West that it's almost a pleasure simply to see him working on a slightly more human scale. It's not that there aren't special effects in RV -- there are, from stunts to CG-green screen work to make the world whizzing by the RV look so real. But by and large, this is a little film -- small scale, by the bloated and grotesque standards we've come to expect from big Hollywood's comedies as of late. And that may be part of what gives it the small appeal it has.
The other good news about RV is that Williams -- acting in his first pure comedy in a long time -- is, by his normal standards, restrained. The manic, antic, anything-for-a-joke Williams really only manifests itself once in the film, when Bob confronts a group of basketball-playing toughs with clueless rap jargon to distract them from venting their fury on Carl. (It's also worth noting that this moment - the film's nadir -- is what Columbia Pictures is using in one set of TV ads. Aaah, marketing.) The rest of the time, Williams is actually quite real, and bounces nicely off of his supporting cast, whether it's Hines (playing a slightly less scabrous version of the long-suffering spouse role she's gotten to hone to perfection on Curb Your Enthusiasm) or Arnett. As the Munro family tours the West, they meet a family of full-time RV-dwellers, the Gornickes. Led by hearty, drawling dad Travis (Jeff Daniels) and sunshiny yodeling mom Mary (Kristin Chenoweth), the Gornickes have an earnest, open hospitality that makes the Munro's skin crawl … and yet, their paths keep crossing, thanks to the exigencies of the script.
Sonnenfeld may have gotten his career as a cinematographer (most memorably for the Coen brothers), but he's picked up some of the better traits a director can have -- notably, knowing to pick a good supporting cast. Williams is given good return volleys by his fellow actors, whether it's Carl's obsession with weightlifting at age 12 (informed that the family trip's now an RV expedition, Carl's unimpressed: "The hotel in Hawaii had a weight room. Doesn't anyone care about my lifting schedule?" Jordanna Levesque -- who apparently has a multi-platinum singing career under the name JoJo which I am blissfully unaware of, which is just another reason to be glad about getting old -- also brings a nice presence to her scenes, and might be able to make a nice career for herself in teen cinema if she doesn't get Lohan'ed. Hines and Daniels are both old pros at the kind of support that RV needs, and they provide it with grace, good timing and a well-tuned sense of give-and-take.
Of course, RV isn't even a quarter as funny as what may be the best mobile home comedy ever, Albert Brooks' Lost in America. And yet it will be seen by so many more people, drawn in by Williams' name and extensive marketing. In Anna Karenina, Tolstoy famously observed that "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." Tolstoy didn't live to see modern Hollywood, or he would have had to add a clause to that maxim: While every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, movies about unhappy families are all alike. Put more succinctly, anyone who doesn't think that RV will end with a certain amount of bonding, hugging and learning is a maroon of the highest order. In a movie landscape littered with unfunny comedies, too-broad characters and the insipid hyperactivity of something like Scary Movie 4, RV may float through on a few laughs like a limp breeze, but compared to too many other family comedies, that might be enough to make it seem like a breath of fresh air.
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home