New on the South African circuit on October 26: The Campaign, Frankenweenie, Hope Springs and The Possession and Paranormal Activity 4.

The Campaign

By Adam Shaw, Catholic News Service

After helming two much-lauded HBO political dramas — 2008’s “Recount” and 2012’s “Game Change” — director Jay Roach (“Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” and sequels) tries a more humorous approach to the same subject with “The Campaign”.

Roach’s potentially salient big-screen critique of the nation’s electoral process, however, gets buried under a landslide of vulgarity and sex jokes. The ill-chosen topics from which his picture attempts to draw laughs range from adultery and masturbation to paedophilia and bestiality.

North Carolina congressman Cam Brady (Will Ferrell) is enjoying a safe, undisturbed career until an obscene phone call intended for his mistress is accidentally received instead by a clan of devout Christians in the midst of a family dinner.

Poll numbers plummet, and Brady’s formerly supportive backers, the wealthy and powerful Motch brothers (John Lithgow and Dan Aykroyd), decide a shake-up is required at the next election. The money-flushed siblings settle on Marty Huggins (Zach Galifianakis) — the bumbling director of a local tourist centre, and son of a political operator of their acquaintance (Brian Cox) — as the change they can believe in.

Huggins is a lovable but naive dunce who simply wants to make a difference for his hometown. So the brothers install ruthless Tim Wattley (Dylan McDermott) as his campaign manager. Wattley soon transforms Huggins into a win-at-all-cost contender — much to the disapproval of the candidate’s lonely wife Mitzi (Sarah Baker) — and the race begins in earnest.

As election day approaches, decency and civility are tossed aside by both individuals as the contest descends into farce.

Although Chris Henchy and Shawn Harwell’s screenplay includes a few relatively serious passages of commentary — specifically a dour-faced final 20 minutes — dealing with issues like campaign finance reform, the majority of the running time is devoted to sophomoric humour and repellant shock gags.

While taking some funny swipes at how politicians try to use religion to win votes, moreover — “America, Jesus, Freedom” runs Brady’s risible slogan —  “The Campaign” also includes material genuinely odious to viewers of faith. In particular, a scene involving Brady’s campaign manager Mitch (Jason Sudeikis) and the words of the Our Father — which, in a potentially embarrassing lapse, his pseudo-pious employer has managed to forget — sinks (albeit briefly) into obscene sacrilege.

The film contains an instance of blasphemy, some mild violence, an adultery theme, obscured frontal male and partial upper female nudity, a few uses of profanity, much sexual and occasional irreverent humour, pervasive rough and crude language and an obscene gesture. Morally offensive.

Hope Springs

By John Mulderig, Catholic News Service

Although fundamentally moral, “Hope Springs” — a skillful mix of comedy and drama that focuses on the problems of one long-married couple — is also significantly flawed.

Primarily, that’s because the frankness with which director David Frankel’s film approaches marital intimacy veers, at times, into intrusiveness. Additionally, in keeping with the under-refined values of contemporary society, his picture implies that virtually all methods of obtaining sexual gratification — at least between married partners — are acceptable.

Still, a resounding pro-marriage message undergirds the proceedings as aging suburbanites Kay (Meryl Streep) and Arnold Soames (Tommy Lee Jones) work to rekindle their spark. Worn down by routine after three decades together, they’ve gradually grown physically and emotionally distant, occupying separate rooms at night and hardly exchanging a word during the day.

While grumpy Arnold seems resigned to this fate, feisty Kay is unwilling to give up so easily. So, at her insistence, the pair sets off to Maine for a week of intensive therapy with marriage counsellor and self-help author Dr. Bernard Feld (Steve Carell).

Even discussing their personal problems — much less solving them — proves a challenge for the buttoned-up duo. Much of the humour plays off the contrast between their verbal and behavioural inhibitions and Feld’s unflappable straightforwardness on any and all subjects.

Yet, as he peers into every aspect of their history, as well as their unfulfilled desires and fantasies, viewers need not be puritans to share in Kay and Arnold’s discomfiture. And things go from bad to worse when we’re subjected to a brief but unseemly scene in which Kay resorts to a sinful alternative to the physical union she and Arnold no longer share. While her act is portrayed as a pathetic symptom of desperation, this interlude marks the movie’s low point of unnecessary immodesty.

Thus, while “Hope Springs” celebrates determined fidelity, and finds its leads in top form, the proportion of screenwriter Vanessa Taylor’s script devoted to talk about, or activity in, the bedroom narrows the appropriate audience for this keenly observed study. Only mature moviegoers well formed in faith and morals will be up to the task of gleaning its virtues from its failings.

The film contains considerable sexual content, including semigraphic scenes of marital lovemaking and masturbation; pervasive references to sexuality; a benign view of aberrant sex acts; about a half-dozen uses of profanity; and at least one crude and a few crass terms. Limited adult audience: films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling.

Frankenweenie

By John Mulderig, Catholic News Service

Director Tim Burton’s gothic comedy “Frankenweenie” is a skillful 3-D animated spoof of horror conventions built around the heart-warming relationship between a boy and his dog.

This black-and-white, stop-motion cartoon — an expanded version of Burton’s 1984 live-action short of the same title — might prove too scary for small fry. But it will delight their older siblings and amuse parents as well.

After his beloved pet and constant companion Sparky is killed in an accident, socially isolated but scientifically gifted Victor Frankenstein (voice of Charlie Tahan) uses stock monster-movie methods to bring the pooch back to life.

Despite his subsequent efforts to conceal his breakthrough from his parents (voices of Catherine O’Hara and Martin Short) and from his peers, Victor’s secret gets out. And when his schoolmates try to emulate his feat, the results are temporarily disastrous.

Said classmates constitute an odd assortment of entertainingly eerie figures, including pint-sized versions of characters long ago made famous by Boris Karloff and Peter Lorre. Another familiar genre persona, the Weird Girl (also voiced by O’Hara), becomes the vehicle for the only material in the picture that some might consider objectionable.

The Weird Girl believes that her cat, Mr. Whiskers, is given to prophetic dreams, and that the subject of each dream can be identified by the fact that Mr. Whiskers’ droppings afterward form the first initial of that person’s name. The Weird Girl relates all this — visual aid included — to indicate to Victor that something dramatic is about to happen to him.

Victor’s interest in experimentation is sparked by his Vincent Price-like science teacher, Mr. Rzykruski (voice of Martin Landau). Though a subplot involves Mr. Rzykruski’s persecution at the hands of ignorant townsfolk, there’s no direct connection drawn between their fear of him and their adherence to any form of supernatural belief, religious or otherwise. And while Mr. Rzykruski praises the value of science at some length, he never does so to the disparagement of faith.

The light-hearted tone of John August’s screenplay, moreover, together with the less-than- scientifically plausible events on which so much of the plot turns, make it doubtful that any serious point is being made — apart, perhaps, from a general endorsement of learning in the broadest sense.

The film contains mild scatological humour and some science-fiction hokum. General patronage.

The Possession

By John Mulderig, Catholic News Service

Catholic exorcists get some time off with “The Possession”. Since this mostly gore-free chiller’s premise rests on Jewish tales of demonic indwelling by beings called dybbuks, it’s a Hasidic student, rather than a priest, who eventually gets summoned to the rescue. And file this one under “Only in America”: said scholar — Tzadok by name — is played by Hasidic rapper and reggae singer Matisyahu.

At the outset, recently divorced dad Clyde Brenek (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) hardly knows what he’s letting himself in for when he and his two daughters, Hannah (Madison Davenport) and Em (Natasha Calis), stop by a weekend yard sale. There, Em’s fancy is taken by a seemingly innocuous wooden box and Clyde casually agrees to buy it for her.

Em’s interest soon turns to life-blighting obsession as the dybbuk that was supposed to be trapped in the container forever emerges and instead takes up residence inside her. Logically enough, Clyde and his ex, Stephanie (Kyra Sedgwick), assume Em’s deteriorating demeanour is an after-effect of their split. But as eerie and inexplicable events continue to plague the family, Clyde at least realizes they’ll need to turn to someone other than a therapist.

Danish-born director Ole Bornedal initially achieves above-average results with his macabre doings, which are ostensibly based on real events. But returns diminish noticeably as his film approaches its overwrought climax.

Clyde and Stephanie’s situation is used as the vehicle for a strong pro-marriage message, however. In one poignant scene, Clyde watches as Stephanie and the girls sit down to dinner with Stephanie’s boyfriend Brett (Grant Show). The quartet makes up a family circle from which Clyde feels both physically and emotionally excluded.

Another plus is the respectful treatment of the Jewish faith in Juliet Snowden and Stiles White’s script, including Clyde’s fervent recitation of the 91st Psalm at Em’s bedside. Of course, the admixture of folklore, like that of the dybbuk, though necessary to the filmmakers’ purpose, tends to blur the bright line between mere legend and revealed truth.

The film contains some violent and potentially disturbing images, a premarital situation, at least one use each of profanity and crude language and brief sexual references. Adults.

 

Paranormal Activity 4

By John Mulderig, Catholic News Service

The sardonic saying that no good deed goes unpunished springs to mind while viewing co-directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman’s flesh crawler “Paranormal Activity 4” (Paramount). That’s because, this time out, it’s an act of kindness that unleashes the horror franchise’s familiar poltergeists.

The setting is still suburbia – suburban Nevada, to be precise – but the focus has shifted to the younger generation. Teen couple Alex (Kathryn Newton) and Ben (Matt Shively) find their lives disrupted in increasingly eerie ways after her parents (Stephen Dunham and Alexondra Lee) take in her little brother Wyatt’s (Aiden Lovekamp) weird playmate Robbie (Brady Allen). Robbie needs shelter because his reclusive single mother Katie (Katie Featherston) – a character who has figured prominently in the earlier outings — has been hospitalised.

The found-footage conceit that allows us to peek in on the nerve-jangling events that follow becomes strained at times, leaving moviegoers to wonder who would continue to carry a camera around with them while being terrorized by demons. But the comparatively restrained mayhem that has made this series more commendable than many of its genre competitors endures.

Things get grim but never gory, and the cliched convention of randy adolescents getting a knife to the heart while indulging in bedroom antics is studiously avoided. In fact, in one early scene, Alex barely tolerates Ben’s awkward placement of a hand on her thigh. Thereafter she casually brushes off his verbal advances.

Part of the pagan mumbo jumbo the duo stumbles across on the Internet – someone needs to tell Alex how to pronounce Hittites – involves the idea that the victims these particular evil spirits target must be “inviolate.” The ensuing dialogue makes it clear that both Alex and Ben are virgins – his feeble protestations to the contrary notwithstanding.

Both young leads often express their shock or amazement via expletives, however, and – realistically enough – Ben likes to indulge in sexual banter of the boastful or wishful-thinking variety. Still, adults in search of enjoyably chilling diversion will continue to find far less to repel them in these proceedings than they would in sequels about doomed dates – be it “Friday the 13th” or “Halloween.”

The film contains a few scenes of harsh but bloodless violence, some sexual and scatological humour, a few uses of profanity, about 20 rough and crude terms and references to occult hokum.