It was a surprise when Brendan Gleeson was announced as a Golden Globe nominee for his role as a corrupt, drug using, foul mouthed cop. Once you’ve seen it you’ll know why. He owns the role. The best statement said about his character is he’s either really stupid or really smart.

Gleeson plays Gerry Boyle, a north Ireland police officer who is investigating a recent murder when FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle, HOTEL RWANDA) comes to town on a mission to stop an international drug ring. When Everett shows the local officers pictures of the suspects, Boyle wonders to the African-American agent how they could be drug dealers when their white. Everyone knows all drug dealers are black or Mexican. Boyle’s defense for his racism is that he is Irish and it is part of his culture.

In fact, Boyle is just trying to get a rise out of Everett. He doesn’t like city folk coming into his jurisdiction. He knows that his murder investigation is connected to Everett’s drug case. The two sure make an unlikely pair. Everett just doesn’t understand Boyle’s complete lack of restraint. But one can expect anything from a man who will put a murder investigation on hold for a day so that he can have a fling with two prostitutes.

The best part of Gleeson’s performance is the slyness he brings. Is he purposely trying to be offensive or is he just really naive about black people? Or could it be a bit of both? Why does he speak so openly about his drug use and fornication with hookers around his superiors and Everett? Have the drugs and booze made him clueless or does he know something akin to the “donkey photos” that give him a free ride? Is he the worst cop ever or some kind of Gaelic yojimbo? You’ll change your mind from moment to moment.

How did he get this way? Well when you witness the f bomb filled visits with his mum Eileen (Fionnula Flanagan, FOUR BROTHERS) you’ll get a clue. When he is strapped with a young partner named McBride (Rory Keenan, REIGN OF FIRE), you get the impression that he long ago came to the realization that by-the-book police work is pointless. McBride is from Dublin and for the Galway born Boyle, he might as well be from Wisconsin. Watch how cozy he gets with McBride’s Croatian wife Gabriela (Katarina Cas). And you have to blame the movies. Boyle loves the idea of going out like the cowboys in THE WILD BUNCH, but he’s too smart for suicide.

It’s not a mystery where and when and who the drug dealers are, but Boyle’s involvement is a mystery. He’s got multiple motivations and a lot rides on which one he decides to follow. By the end though, we know for sure whether he is really flippin’ stupid or really flippin’ smart.

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Those critics that keep writing that this or that new film from Woody Allen has brought the famed director back to form is living in the past. Yes, during the late ’90s and early 2000s, Allen was not making his best work, but it’s been six years since MATCH POINT (his best since 1989’s CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS) and in between that and now we got VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA. With this film, Allen has returned to his whimsical comedy work like THE PURPLE ROSE OF CAIRO.

Gil (Owen Wilson, BOTTLE ROCKET) is a successful screenwriter, who works on hack material. He has always wanted to write a novel, but has never had the guts. On vacation in Paris, he finds inspiration to start. His fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams, THE NOTEBOOK) worries that he’s throwing away his lucrative career on a gamble. This would also throw away their house in Malibu. Tired of hanging out with Inez’s pseudo-intellectual friend Paul (Michael Sheen, FROST/NIXON) and his clueless wife Carol (Nina Arianda, WIN WIN), Gil takes late-night walks and gets teleported back to the 1920s.

This fantastic journey is everything Gil could hope for because as he says, he was born too late. On his first night, he visits a party where Cole Porter (Yves Heck) is playing. Then he runs into F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston, THOR & Alison Pill, MILK), who turn out to be the lively and volatile couple he always imagined them to be. Later that evening, they introduce him to their friend Ernest Hemingway (Corey Stoll, SALT). Gil asks him to read his novel and Hemingway says he hates it before he even reads it, because if it is terrible he will hate it and if it is good, he’ll be jealous and he’ll hate it. So he recommends that his friend Gertrude Stein (Kathy Bates, MISERY) read it.

At Stein’s home, Gil meets Pablo Picasso (Marcial Di Fonzo Bo, THE MAN I LOVE), who is having an affair with the beautiful Adriana (Marion Cotillard, INCEPTION), who moved to Paris to design clothes with Coco Chanel. Gil finds her fascinating, but so does Hemingway. What does a guy do? Sit down in a café with surrealists Salvador Dali (Adrien Brody, THE PIANIST), Luis Bunuel (Adrien de Van, IN MY SKIN) and Man Ray (Tom Cordier) perhaps?

Gil finds inspiration in the past, but will he get trapped there… literally? He is always inexplicably brought back to the present where his strange behavior is questioned by Inez, who seems only interested in one thing from the past   expensive antique furniture – and not Gil’s silly manuscript about an owner of a nostalgia shop. Inez’s father John (Kurt Fuller, WAYNE’S WORLD) actually hires a private investigator to follow Gil to see where he goes at night. This could be trouble because he’s falling in love with a possible figment of his imagination.

This comedy certainly provides more laughs to those that are fans of literature and film. I’m not sure the average viewer would get the bit where Gil tells Luis Bunuel to make a film about rich people not being able to leave a dinner party and Bunuel not getting why they just don’t walk out the door. But what makes this film so good is that it doesn’t matter. It certainly rewards fans of art, but the characters are relatable. It’s not uncommon for many people to believe that they would have been better suited living in an earlier “golden” age. Gil allows the viewer to live out that fantasy and experience the joys and pitfalls that it brings. As an artist Gil’s trips to the past are inspiring, because great artists of the past are always inspiring to new artists. We live in their era every time we read their books or see their films or gaze upon their paintings.

This is certainly a lighter work from Allen, but it’s one of his best lighter films. He finds another good conduit for his “Woody Allen” character in Wilson, who, whether conscious or not, takes on Allen tics in his performance. Allen, like Gil, might love the 1920s, but he’s still making films that people of the early 21st century can relate to.

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Steven Spielberg has made a rousing globetrotting adventure that harkens back to his early INDIANA JONES films. Using performance capture, he brought to life Herge’s world-renowned comic strip character in a strangely realistic and surreal way. The lightning paced action scenes will be well accepted from the videogamer set, while older audiences might want it to have slowed down a bit to let us meet these characters.

The audience is thrown right into the action as Tintin (Jamie Bell, KING KONG) buys a model ship that turns out to be a hotly desired item. Along with his dedicated dog Snowy, Tintin tries to get to the bottom of why Sakharine (Daniel Craig, CASINO ROYALE) will go to great extremes to get Tintin’s model and two identical ones. Along the way, Tintin teams up with the drunken Capt. Haddock (Andy Serkis, RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES), whose family is connected to the great mystery.

While there are brief mentions to Tintin being a famous reporter, we never get to see him report. There is something to be said about a story that throws the viewer right into the action, using the discovery of what is happening to pull them along. Here we don’t get to know Tintin enough to care about him more so than we care about the mystery. Capt. Haddock turns out to have a more engaging connection to the plot. He drinks due to the pressure of living up to the adventures of his ancestor Sir Francis Haddock. Even Tintin questions his usefulness when a bottle of booze is around. But when the going gets tough, Capt. Haddock gets burping. It’s far funnier than it sounds.

The film is actually based directly on several Tintin adventures Herge wrote, however they have been changed. In the comic strip, Tintin and Capt. Haddock were already friends. The film tries to make this an origin story. Because the script has some first act issues, one wonders why this was done. What if we saw Tintin as a star reporter and his friend Capt. Haddock was always getting him in trouble due to his drinking? What if discovering the mystery of the Unicorn was a way for Tintin to help an old friend redeem his pubic image? As a fan, I wonder why the filmmaker would make the relationship weaker for their big introduction to a worldwide audience? But one can only wonder and take the movie for what it is.

Despite wanting more character development, the personalities of Tintin and especially Capt. Haddock come out through the action. Haddock rattling off curse after curse at the bad guys sounded just like I imagined it to be. Tintin is smart and ingenious like a teenage MacGyver. Sakharine is pompous and ruthless. The dimwitted detectives Thomson (Nick Frost, SHAUN OF THE DEAD) and Thompson (Simon Pegg, SHAUN OF THE DEAD) make one glad Tintin is on the scene. And you can’t forget Snowy; he takes man’s best friend to a whole new level.

The use of motion-capture is a touchy issue. I found it another step forward in the stylized arena. This is far superior to an early effort like POLAR EXPRESS, but it isn’t AVATAR. What Spielberg’s tightrope walk between photo real and cartoonish does for the film is allow him to push the action. Cartoons have always allowed more latitude for the outlandish. The car chase through the streets of Morocco would not work in straight live-action. With impeccable timing, it highlights Spielberg’s skills as a choreographer of thrilling action. How he weaves together Tintin and Capt. Haddock on a motorcycle with a sidecar, a hawk, a tank and a moving hotel will amaze.

The film left me wanting more in both a good and bad way. As originally planned, this is the first film in a trilogy with Peter Jackson taking on the second installment. It might be interesting to see what he would do differently. This is like reading the “quick read” tab on a long article — you get the primary points, but not the depth. Even though I only got a taste this time, I still have a thirst for more adventures.

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For a continuing franchise it’s so often the quality of the villain that makes the series longevity. The hero never changes, or we think that is the case. It’s a good villain that pushes the protagonist to the edge. This is the case with the introduction of Professor James Moriarty into Guy Ritchie’s steam punk version of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s great detective.

Moriarty was only hinted at in the original, but here he is played with intelligent ruthlessness by Jared Harris (TV’s MAD MEN). Holmes (Robert Downey Jr., IRON MAN) has linked the university professor to a series of bombings that have been attributed to an anarchist group. His longtime beau Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams, THE NOTEBOOK) is still working for the man who has no qualms murdering to meet his goals. But what are his goals? Holmes boldly confronts him, which makes the dastardly schemer attack Holmes where it matters.

Dr. John Watson (Jude Law, A.I.) has just gotten married to Mary (Kelly Reilly, PRIDE & PREJUDICE). On the train to their holiday, they are attacked, but Holmes is there to save the day and ruin their honeymoon. In an effort to thwart Moriarty’s plans, the duo team up once again to get to the bottom of the bombings. They receive help from Holmes’ politically connected brother Mycroft (Stephen Fry, V FOR VENDETTA), who is half elitist and half nudist. A recovered letter will lead them to gypsy fortuneteller Madam Simza Heron (Noomi Rapace, THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO), who is good in a fight.

The scenes between Holmes and Moriarty are golden. Their battle of wits is fun like watching two expert duelers. Michele and Kieran Mulroney’s script creates a memorable conclusion where Holmes and Moriarty are playing chess while “Holmes” is still in another room trying to stop a political assassination. While the idea of them playing chess seems obvious, the sequence has multiple layers and brings together all the conventions of the characters and this particular franchise.

Moriarty makes this film better than the first. But that’s why I wanted more of him. While Holmes is always on his trail, he doesn’t seem omnipresent. This is mostly due to long stretches were he is absent and Holmes and Watson are in search of Heron’s brother, who of course will have a role to play in the larger plot. Moreover, the slightly bloated film seems bogged down a bit with slow-motion fight scenes where Holmes thinks things out ahead of time and other slow-motion action scenes where we watch bullets explode trees so that we can watch every splinter fall. And let’s not even get into the stuff that would be better suited in a sci-fi film than a detective actioner set in 1895.

Nonetheless, Downey Jr. is a joy to watch as the flippant detective. The repartee between he and Law’s Watson is downright lovable. These partners in fighting crime are set out against a grand manipulator who can match wits with Holmes. But what makes him more dangerous is that he knows how to get at Holmes. He’s like the Green Goblin dangling Mary Jane over the edge of the bridge. Holmes is presented with lose-lose choices. But he’s always prepared.

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Roman Polanski adapts Yasmina Reza’s dark comedy play for the screen. For better and worse, Polanski, who co-wrote the script with Reza, doesn’t adapt the film very much. Outside of a dialogue free opening and closing in a park, the rest of this dialogue-heavy production takes place in one New York apartment. Primarily his top notched cast keeps the film from crumbling under its weaknesses.

Penelope and Michael Longstreet (Jodie Foster, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS & John C. Reilly, CHICAGO) have invited Nancy and Alan Cowan (Kate Winslet, THE READER & Christoph Waltz, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS) over to their home to discuss what to do about an altercation between their two sons. The Cowans’ son hit the Longstreets’ son in the face with a stick. As Penelope likes to point out, their son disfigured her son. As they discuss the course of action to take tensions start to bubble up and allegiances between the foursome will shift. Carnage ensues.

The best part is Reza’s attention to detail and personality. Foster plays Penelope as a woman who frets a great deal about the problems of the world. Liberal guilt would be her primary motivator. She is determined to make sure the Cowans understand how much of a “big deal” this fight was. The Cowans seem like they just want to get back to work. Waltz plays Alan as a workaholic lawyer who is far more interested in his client with a PR problem than what his son did. He doesn’t like being lectured by Penelope and has fairly resigned himself to the fact that his son is an animal. His ambivalence only agitates Penelope more.

Winslet’s Nancy puts forth the effort to at least appear concerned, but is increasingly embarrassed by her husband’s constant cellphone conversations. Reilly’s Michael tries to keep the peace and doesn’t want to take anyone’s side. It’s his method of resolving this problem as fast as possible, so he can move on and forget about it. But their conciliatory attitudes change after a few cups of coffee and a glass or two of booze.

Part of the issue I had with the script (could even be the play, but I have not seen it) was that it uses one contrivance after another to keep the Cowans at the Longstreets’ apartment. The problem’s answer stares you in the face, because the characters discuss bringing the kids together to work out the problem together. If this happened, the two couples would have a reason to sit and talk to each other. Alan, especially, seems like he would have left long before the point that he’s cleaning vomit off his pants in the bathroom.

Once CARNAGE gets past some of its initial contrivances of forcing the characters to stay together, the plot finds reasonably awkward motivations for the Cowans to stay and the awkwardness opens up the gates for the conversation to turn toward the vicious. The story doesn’t have any grand message about human nature other than civilized interaction between people is a fraud. In the end, the film works as a detailed character study where Penelope’s “heart on your sleeve” philosophy seems to get crushed by the powers of the god of carnage.

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Director Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody last collaborated on the Oscar nominated JUNO. Cody won the Oscar for her screenplay, her first produced script. Some thought she was a one hit wonder following her entertaining, but not all that original, horror flick JENNIFER’S BODY. YOUNG ADULT proves them wrong.

This dark comedy follows Mavis Gary (Charlize Theron, MONSTER), a ghost writer for a popular tween girl book series. Her life is at a low point with the recent end of her marriage and the close of the book series. Everything seems even worse when she gets a birth announcement from Buddy Slade (Patrick Wilson, LITTLE CHILDREN), her old high school flame. So she gets the great idea of going back to her small hometown and break up his marriage.

In the little Minnesota town of Mercury, she was the prom queen and the envy of the other girls. Now she is approaching 40, dressing like she’s 20 and completely consumed with her own wants and desires. She is convinced that Buddy and she can get past his marriage to Beth (Elizabeth Reaser, TWILIGHT) and his newborn daughter. In a drunken confession at a bar, she reveals her plan to former classmate Matt Freehauf (Patton Oswalt, BIG FAN), who she only remembers as “hate crime boy.” In high school, jocks, believing he was gay, beat Matt severely, leaving him to use cane for the rest of his life. And that’s not the worst of his problems.

Theron does a remarkable job of creating a self absorbed homewrecker without an ounce of irony. Living on a diet of Diet Coke, booze and vacuous reality shows, she is a hot mess by day and then transforms herself with tons a makeup and hair extensions into a walking man trap beauty. This cougar has a serious case of arrested development. In her eyes, no one has changed since high school. She is a reprehensible person, but utterly fascinating.

Cody’s script does a precise balancing act to keep the audience engaged when the central character is so awful. It’s like watching a train wreck in slow motion. And sadly, because we know people like her, we look forward to the inevitable collision with reality. Along the way, we get to meet Buddy and Matt. Buddy is a stand-up guy and we understand why she wants him back. He was a bright spot in her life. Oswalt’s Matt is in his own form of arrested development. His hobbies include making homemade alcohol and creating custom action figures by combining different pieces of action figures together. He sticks around Mavis because as he says guys like him were born loving girls like her. Just her paying attention to him is a high school fantasy come true.

Cody walks this tight rope straight forward. Then when we come to the big moment of comeuppance and she surprises us. When it’s all finished, Mavis is taken down, but we have a newfound sympathy for her. We feel sorry for her, because we know why she is the way she is. Then Cody finds a moment perfect to close with that I will keep secret. This isn’t a film where the bad people see the error of their ways and everything is fixed with a nice bow on it.

Cody crafts wonderful characters and Theron and Oswalt bring them to life with depth and subtlety. Reitman simply serves the material. Throughout the film, Mavis seems to be calling out for someone to shake her straight, but in the same turn, puts down anyone who tries. She right when she says she has problems. If there is any lesson to be learned from this film, when your psycho ex calls to have drinks, don’t go.

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In so many ways this film reminded me of NAPOLEON DYNAMITE – it has a fascinating, unique central character that needs a better movie around him. Hesher and Napoleon are both slightly unlikable, but compelling misfits, but in completely opposite ways. Napoleon is the quintessential nerd, while Hesher is the quintessential anarchist. He really doesn’t give a…

Hesher (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, 50/50) meets the film’s young protagonist T.J. (Devin Brochu, IN THE VALLEY OF ELAH) when the boy inadvertently alerts the cops to the long-haired metal head crashing at a house under construction. As a result, this 20-something loner decides to haunt this young boy day and night. He comes to his house and moves right in. He follows him to school. If T.J. tries to tell him to go away, Hesher threatens very seriously all sorts of violence on him. Covered in tattoos including a giant middle finger on his back and a stick figure blowing out his brains on his chest, Hesher is a force of nature.

If you’re asking how Hesher just moves right in, it’s a good question. T.J.’s mother died in a car accident recently and his father Paul (Rainn Wilson, TV’s THE OFFICE) is inconsolable, spending day and night on the couch staring blankly at the TV. They actually live with his mother (Piper Laurie, CHILDREN OF A LESSER GOD), a sweet old woman who wishes she could do more for her son and grandson. Paul and Grandma just allowing Hesher to squat in their garage and eat at their table as “T.J.’s friend” seems really false. He does have a way of forcing people to do what he wants, but we never see that with Paul and Grandma, so their ambivalence is untrue even with Paul deep in depression.

Meanwhile, T.J. is obsessed with getting the totaled family car back from the junkyard. He tries to buy it back from Larry (John Carroll Lynch, FARGO), but the increasingly irritated man keeps telling him that it’s not for sale. Much like Hesher, T.J. doesn’t take no for an answer. So at one point he locks himself in the car and when Larry’s teenaged employee Dustin (Brendan Hill, IDIOCRACY) tries to get him out, he crushes the teen’s fingers in the window. This of course causes Dustin to torment T.J. at school. When Hesher sees this, he does nothing. T.J. is pissed, so Hesher goes out and defaces Dustin’s car making matters worse.

After one particularly bad run in with Dustin, T.J. is saved by Nicole (Natalie Portman, CLOSER), a clerk at the grocery store. T.J. develops a crush on her, because she is someone in his life who has actually done something for him. But when she meets Hesher things get weird.

Levitt goes for it. Hesher is a violent antisocial ne’er-do-well. He just reacts to a situation without thinking and 99% of the time he makes things worse. His lack of caring about anything is a source of great pride. Intimidation is his first method to get anything. And he follows through with his threats. If he says he’s going to hit you with his car you better run. But he has a soft spot for Grandma. They smoke weed together and he promises to go on walks with her in the morning, which T.J. always backs out of.

You have to give it to director Spencer Susser, who co-wrote the script with David Michod based on Brian Charles Frank’s story – he doesn’t back off from going really dark with his black comedy. Sometimes though he goes over the edge into unfunny and when that happens I got uncomfortable. T.J. doesn’t deserve to get crapped on as much as he gets and the more extreme it gets the less humorous it becomes. And as things progress and Hesher’s influence starts to rub off on him, we are not sure what to think about that.

Because Hesher is not the central character and we know nothing about is background, his softening up at the end seems abrupt. He is too big of a personality to be the “mentor” to a little boy. A more traditional arc of having Hesher “redeemed” through a relationship with a young kid might have worked better like it did in BAD SANTA. And that film didn’t pull punches with its black humor either. Like its title character, HESHER is more of a curiosity than something you want to have in your home.

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Michel Hazanavicius’ effortlessly charming dramedy is really like discovering a lost film from the silent age. The director of the popular French OSS 117 spy spoof series recreates every aspect of a black and white silent film of the 1920s. From the classic 1.37:1 aspect ratio to the title cards to the dramatic pitch, he gets all the details right. His performers nail the acting style, which is a key to the film’s success. But it’s not just a gimmick. It’s a reminder that sometimes words get in the way of visual storytelling.

George Valentin (Jean Dujardin, OSS 117: CAIRO, NEST OF SPIES) is the biggest silent movie star. During the red carpet for his latest international action film, he bumps into Peppy Miller (Berenice Bejo, A KNIGHT’S TALE), a pretty young fan looking for an autograph. Embarrassed at first, soon she’s posing for the cameras along with Valentin. The next day she goes to the studio looking to get a job as an extra and lands a role in Valentin’s next picture. He is so charmed by the young woman that he flubs scenes just so he can dance with her over and over again.

The problem is that Valentin is married to Doris (Penelope Ann Miller, CARLITO’S WAY), a prune-faced woman who seems constantly perturbed with her husband even when he and his trained dog are being utterly irresistible. Peppy moves on and gets better and better parts. Meanwhile, studio head Al Zimmer (John Goodman, THE BIG LEBOWSKI) shows Valentin a test of a sound film. Valentin laughs it off as a fad, but Zimmer sees it as the future. Defiantly, Valentin goes out on his own and produces a new silent adventure. But then the stock market crashes even worse than his film does and he is broke.

Dujardin, who won Best Actor at Cannes for this performance, is a big star in France and one can see why here. He has screen presence like any movie star of the Golden Age or today. He performs in the more conscious style of 1920s and 30s. For his films within the film, he mugs it, but contrasts that with a more honest performance for his character’s downward spiral. Bejo is his equal and even has the more difficult role. Her character is plucky in that way that only 1930s film ingénues were. She doesn’t hold back and goes for it without a moment of self doubt that she might come off corny. Their dedication to what Hazanavicius is trying to do is crucial to why I fell in love with this film.

Hazanavicius uses imagery that just doesn’t work the same way it would if there were dialogue we heard. After sadly watching his old films, Valentin curses the man he has become as his shadow appears on the screen. He literally is a shadow of the man he once was. Watch the melodramatic direction Hazanavicius uses during a scene where Valentin frantically pulls sheets off hidden treasures from his past. In any other film, this scene would have come off over-the-top, but in this one it has a power in a purely cinematic way.

As true to the silent era style Hazanavicius is, he doesn’t make this film in a vacuum. He has fun with the conceit right from the first title card. Valentin is being tortured in his action film and the title card reads, “No I won’t talk!” He has a great deal of fun with Valentin’s bad dream about talkies. And Valentin’s resentful co-star Constance (Missi Pyle, GALAXY QUEST) uses a gesture that certainly wouldn’t have been in a 20s flick, but does convey her feelings quite well without words.

And I would be remiss to not mention two other performances. James Cromwell (BABE) is the perfect steady figure as Valentin’s dedicated chauffeur Clifton. Uggie is one of the breakout performers of the year. He plays Valentin’s dedicated Jack Russell terrier, who hits his cues like a comic genius. There hasn’t been a dog this charismatic since his screen soulmate Asta from the THIN MAN series graced the screen.

Despite being a black and white silent film, this is accessible to a wide audience even across language barriers. It establishes its characters through comedy and romance and then connects us with them through tragedy. Like the films that inspired it, emotions move quickly in melodramatic ways, but that is part of its soul and its allure. Like a vintage movie poster would have said – You’ll laugh! You’ll cry! You’ll fall in love!

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This Norwegian fantasy thriller is Norwegian at its core and that is the best thing about it. On its surface, the film takes from found footage pictures such as THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT. A group of students set out to make a film and get more than they wished for. But in this case there aren’t witches, but trolls.

The students originally set out to chronicle bear poaching. They follow the gruff mountain man Hans (Otto Jespersen), whose Land Rover looks like it’s had a few run ins with some big “bears.” But the filmmakers find out quickly that Hans isn’t after bears, but trolls. He’s part of a secret government agency set out to keep the existence of the giant creatures secret. With incidents getting deadlier and more frequent, he decides to bring the students along with him to get the truth out.

When I say this film is Norwegian at its core I mean that its mythology is Norwegian. The plot borrows from mythology we know like trolls being able to smell the blood of a Christian men and the fact that sunlight turns trolls to stone. But it expands on those myths with modern weapons and science. Hans uses UV guns to make the trolls explode. The reason they turn to stone, we are told, because sunlight makes their bodies calcify. We discover all sorts of trolls such as Tosserlads, Ringlefinchs and Jotnars.

Writer/director Andre Ovredal mines a great deal of interest from his original world. Hans tells the students that they have to rub foul-smelling troll stench on their clothes in order to come along with him. This little fact provides great humor when a secret Christian starts feverishly covering himself with the stuff. The excuses that the government comes up with for troll attacks make swamp gas and weather balloons seem way more plausible.

It’s taken me this long to even mention the names of the students, because they are part of the film’s chief problem. They are just there to serve the plot. Thomas (Glenn Erland Tosterud) is the nerdy interviewer. Johanna (Johanna Morck) is the perpetually scared-face sound recorder. Kalle (Tomas Alf Larsen) is the guy behind the camera. That’s about it. Hans is by far the most interesting, but he is one dimensional at best. He’s a superhero, like if Tommy Lee Jones’ Agent K from MEN IN BLACK was more like a Norwegian Swamp Hunter.

The next big flaw is that when you’ve seen one troll, you’ve seen them all. After the first two sightings, the film seems to be going through the motions to show us what cool CG troll the can come up with next. Also the cover-up seems implausible. These trolls are stories high, so wouldn’t someone see them coming from miles away? How do you cover up a walking skyscraper? This mockumentary is more of a curiosity than compelling. By the end I was like Fee! Fie! Ho! Hum!

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This dramedy frustrated and delighted me in equal measure. Writer/director Michael J. Weithorn (THE KING OF QUEENS) proves himself an observant chronicler of human nature and a sitcom gag craftsman. He develops rich comedic scenarios and weaves them together, but leaves us hanging at times. All of it is held together by the wonderful performance of THE OFFICE’s Jenna Fischer.

Fischer plays Laura, a dental hygienist, who suspects that her husband Bob (Chris O’Donnell, BATMAN & ROBIN) is cheating on her. He denies it, which finds a way of costing him his life. Now Laura, who was drinking a bit too much before becoming a widow, is left to care for her son Dennis (Daniel Yelsky), who has a way with coming up with massive lies to win friends.

Laura’s mother Joan (Lesley Ann Warren, VICTOR/VICTORIA) and her sister Katie (Brooke Smith, SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) sit her down to discuss her financial situation. Laura doesn’t want to talk about it, but they keep harping on it and demand that she see Mel Kaminsky (Kim Coates, BLACK HAWK DOWN), a malpractice lawyer who will sue the hospital. Joan has nothing ever good to say about Laura and Katie resents being called the organized sister instead of the pretty one. Laura’s father Warren (Ron Leibman, NORMA RAE) is no help, because he’s too busy reminiscing about his days as a top sports reporter.

Laura isn’t the best mom, but she does her best. She drinks to just get through her day. Her husband says she’s let her self go, but if Fischer is “let go” than God help us what hot is. She is short and sometimes mean when dealing with her son. A good example is not what she is setting for him. So she’s not one to really complain when he tells is new classmates that his dad was a firefighter who died saving people during 9/11.

Her brother-in-law Paul (Rob Benedict, STATE OF PLAY), however, is a good parent and Laura recognizes it. He sees that his son Kyle (Zach Page, AUGUST RUSH) has real talent at playing guitar. He tries to encourage him, but his wife undermines it, because she sees no real future in music and wants her son to focus on getting better grades. Paul deals with his oppressive wife with humor, but it usually just makes her more agitated. In high school, he had a crush on Laura and started dating Katie just to be closer to Laura.

Laura’s life is certainly spinning out of control. Each misstep or lie that she engages in only sets her up for bigger failure. The problem is that all the pieces build and come to a head right before the credits close. I wanted more. In many ways, Laura is at her lowest point when the film ends, but we see her on her way to a better life. But I wanted to see her work her way back. I felt like I was watching the two-hour pilot to a new TV series.

When it’s watching the way families interact for better or worse, the film is a refreshing look at imperfection. The film gets a little lost in sitcom-like scenarios to pump up the humor, because it feels like it’s from another movie and distracts. A perfect example is when Laura’s father keeps the bathroom door open when the family is discussing Laura’s future. He wants to keep in the conversation. It’s funny, but out of place.

Though it’s flawed like its characters, A LITTLE HELP is still always entertaining. Fischer makes Laura relatable. We understand why she tells little lies, because she just wants one moment when someone isn’t on her case. We understand why she loses her temper when her son makes her the bad cop when her husband is off playing bad cop with someone else. We understand when she wants a little help from anyone who will give it to her even if it’s only for a fleeting moment and could cause her even more problems as a result.

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