Culture Surfing

I'M THIIIIS ANNOYING: Larry David (left) as Boris, and Evan Rachel Wood as Melodie

Art imitates life imitates art with Woody Allen’s Whatever Works, starring “Curb Your Enthusiasm’s” Larry David. On “Curb’s” fourth season, Mel Brooks (fictionally) cast David as the scheming Max Bialystock in the musical The Producers. Nodding to the character’s history, a friend of Brooks asked, incredulously, “Zero Mostel. Nathan Lane. Larry David?”

Whatever Works finds David filling in for Mostel on the big screen. Allen wrote Whatever Works with Mostel in mind, but the larger-than-life actor died in 1977. The writer’s strike inspired Allen to dust off the script and tap David to play Boris Yellnikoff, a former physics professor and Nobel Prize also-ran. Boris spends his days teaching chess to kids and launching into tirades that equate humanity with “imbeciles” and “inchworms.”

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(Image courtesy Jessica Miglio/© Gravier Productions)

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SPACE SAVERS: Giddy (David Cross, from left), Mala (Evan Rachel Wood), and Capt. Jim Stanton (Luke Wilson)

GENRE: CGI sci-fi adventure

THE PITCH: Evan Rachel Wood voices Mala, a spunky, tech-savvy teenager on Terra, a planet of legless, floating tadpole-people. When the remnants of humanity come to colonize her world — with extreme prejudice — can she and shipwrecked soldier Jim Stanton (Luke Wilson) convince their respective races to give peace a chance?

MONEY SHOTS: The 3-D enhances some neat-o shots of gravity-defying alien flora and fauna, as well as the Da Vinci-esque flying machines Mala and her pal Senn (Justin Long) use to go joyriding. After the ecological destruction of Earth, humanity lives on an intricate, gyroscopic space ark falling into catastrophic disrepair. Some creepy, “X-Files”-style images when the humans experiment on the harmless aliens.

BEST LINE: “It’s a miracle! They are gods! Take me!” the aliens exclaim when human scoutships invade, as if they’re watching the Rapture. The script broaches the notion that the alien government keeps them in a superstitious, pre-industrial state of naiveté, but doesn’t run with the idea.

Continue reading “Hollywood Product: Battle for Terra“

(Photo courtesy Roadside Attractions and Lionsgate)

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