The promise of seeing Channing Tatum , Matthew McConaughey, and their manscaped compatriots bare (almost) it all in Steven Soderbergh ’s Magic Mike has quickened the collective pulse of the film’s target audience in the weeks leading up to Friday’s release. But while ladies and many gents will get a titillating thrill from the scantily-clad dance numbers and cheesy-fantasy bumps ‘n’ grinds (and there are so, so many), what elevates the film beyond its “ Showgirls -with-men” concept is the depth and naturalness in the story of 30-year-old star performer Mike (Tatum) and his pursuit of the American dream as one of the “Cock-rocking Kings of Tampa.” Based loosely on Tatum’s eight-month experience as a male stripper in his teens — a time during which Tatum admits to witnessing a much more dark and depressing version of events than what producing partner/writer Reid Carolin transposes to the script — Magic Mike flies on Tatum’s charismatic turn as the male stripper at the center of this world filled with g-strings and crumpled dollar bills, the most ubiquitous, and sweat-drenched, tokens of power in this strange little world. An ambitious would-be entrepreneur who diligently saves the cash he earns working nights at McConaughey’s all-male dance revue, Tatum’s Mike dreams of starting his own custom furniture business but bad credit and a crap economy — and, more problematically, his hedonistic lifestyle — keep him from realizing his ideal life. When he meets an eager-but-directionless college dropout ( Alex Pettyfer ) and takes him under his wing, Mike sees a chance to mentor the kid. But the more that success comes at the club, the more Mike sees his real goals slipping further out of reach. Closing the LA Film Fest on a star-studded note — and with plenty of testosterone on the red carpet — Magic Mike should ride into release on Friday with healthy word of mouth, if only judging by the enthusiasm level in the ladies room following a press screening last week. Granted, a number of men seemed to have been left lukewarm by the sight of Tatum & Co. in various states of undress in the film: Cos-playing as firemen, Marines, doctors, and the like, air-thrusting in the daintiest of thongs, dry-humping dozens of female club extras. But the ladies room? Positively abuzz. A few loudly complimented the costume design, which boasts more thongs than we’ve seen since Baywatch — and those whale tails weren’t sported by oiled-up actors like McConaughey, who, set legend has it, improvised a “tuck and roll” move following a wardrobe malfunction (an overzealous extra was the culprit ) that seems to have made it into the film, a glimmer of panicked realism flickering across his face. There’s deeper prodding to be done about the men who protest too much about male nudity in Magic Mike , joyous moments of man-butts and chests, mostly, shot with plenty of humor. And there’s no real tit for tat, so to speak, with the few instances of female topless nudity seen in the film; lady boobs don’t really equal dude butts on the nudity continuum, but that’s how it is. Likewise, female-performer strip clubs and their male-performer counterparts are inherently different to boot, a fact that Soderbergh, Tatum, and Carolin rightly recognize — it’s generally dimly-lit sexual voyeurism vs. bright and cheesy fantasy spectatorship. But boy, does Soderbergh get that gloriously cheesy vibe. One could simply call it abs olutely s pec tacular on account of the man meat, which certainly delivers on raunchy, knowing fun. But it’s the deeper themes, captured in an observational style, that really make Magic Mike work as more than just a cheap thrill. It may be a stripper movie, but it’s also about economic self-determination and the struggle between art vs. commerce — and that goes as much for Soderbergh and Tatum as it does for the characters grasping for dollars, and their creative destinies, on-screen. Look for Movieline’s full review of Magic Mike this week, and stay tuned for more on the film. Read more from the LA Film Festival here . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Bachelorette director Leslye Headland and Radius co-head Tom Quinn. Bachelorette was dubbed the “indie Bridesmaids ” at Sundance. OK, maybe there are some similarities. There are females and there’s a pending wedding and the proverbial “shit hits the fan,” but that’s about it. Based on a play of the same name by Leslye Headland who directed the screen version, the story is quite frankly not going to be a hit with everyone. But for the segment of the population that gets a thrill off of bad ass humor, Bachelorette offers up a load of laughs. John Waters appeared to enjoy himself at the screening of the film, which opened up the Provincetown International Film Festival this week, so that is a stamp of some sort of approval, right? “It was incredible to see it with that audience. There’s something about the [crowd] here that has the exact correct taste for this movie,” Leslye Headland said to ML with a big smile and laughs at the festival. “To have an audience that’s on the same page from the opening jokes right on through the final scenes was great. They accepted these characters. It wasn’t just affirmation with their laughter, but there was good will toward them too.” Starring a rabble rousing Kirsten Dunst, Isla Fisher and Lizzy Caplan, the trio hit New York to help their friend Becky (Rebel Wilson) prepare for her wedding. But these women are anything but prissy debutantes. Booze, drugs, blow jobs, foul mouths – it’s all there and it keeps coming for more. Becky is the only one who seems to have cleaned up her act, and the bad ass trio get into more trouble when they accidentally tear the wedding dress the night before the ceremony. “Kirsten, Isla and Lizzy never thought they should tone down their characters,” offered Headland. “They even improved stuff where where even I didn’t know if we could use some of the things they did. When you watch it, you can see that they’re having fun. I think they were excited to play women they had never met before.” Headland made the Black List for her script back in 2008, but had to go the independent route when studios shied away from the material Bachelorette had played off-Broadway and she was encouraged by a friend to make the screen version her way. “The idea was that could I make a romantic comedy that I would want to see. It’s not overly dire, but it’s dramatic and they’re acting like people. They’re making mistakes and they’re learning from them…” she said. “I wanted to make a film about women that treated them like people and not paper dolls that act all in the way we wish we acted.” The Weinstein Company’s new label Radius picked up the film after it debuted at Sundance. The film has since been re-edited and its pace is absolute killer. The earlier version was more melancholy and the moments of hilarity were buffered with some slow parts. But the version that is presumably the final one that will be released in theaters in early fall had the audience in stitches here in Provincetown. Still there are dissenters and Headland said she expects there to be people who won’t like it. “I’d be more worried if there was [indifferent] reaction to it,” she said. The women in this film are dealing with their inner-demons and resolution does not come in the course of one day as it might in other movies. Noted Headland: “People don’t change in one night, but one night can change people.”
Movieline caught up with the charismatic William Friedkin last weekend at the Seattle Film Festival, where the Exorcist / French Connection director received a Lifetime Achievement award and screened his brutal Southern-fried potboiler Killer Joe . Before he held court keeping a packed audience rapt with tales from his nearly five-decade career in film (highlights below), Friedkin stopped to discuss two of the topics he’s wrestling with these days: His legal battle to win back the rights to his 1977 pic Sorcerer , and the absurdity of the MPAA, which anointed Killer Joe with an NC-17 rating. Friedkin is active on Twitter , which has allowed film fans unprecedented access to the Oscar-winner and given him the chance to discuss his battle for the rights to Sorcerer , his Roy Scheider-starring remake of The Wages of Fear . “I’m suing Universal and Paramount to get control of Sorcerer ,” he explained to Movieline. “It evidently means a lot to people, and I want people to be able to see it.” As with many older films, rights to Sorcerer lie out of the filmmaker’s hands – and studios, according to Friedkin, are allowing precious 35mm prints to deteriorate right under their own noses. “What’s happened to the legacy of almost all the studios is that the people who run them now don’t care,” he said. “They don’t give a damn. I know the guy from Lincoln Center, he tried to get a print of Blade Runner and Warner Bros. told him they didn’t know who owned it.” Even in the care of studios, library titles threaten to become damaged beyond repair. Friedkin doesn’t want what happened to another ‘70s classic to happen to his film. “Paramount put out a beautiful Blu-ray of The Godfather almost two years ago,” he said. “They went to get it out of their vaults and it had deteriorated, and they had to spend over a million dollars to restore it. It’s probably the gem of their library, and they just let it go. So they don’t care about the legacy of the work that they do. I hope I win my lawsuit, and I’m going to expose what they’re doing nevertheless.” As for his current film, Killer Joe – an assuredly brutal film whose tagline boasts “a totally twisted deep-fried Texas redneck trailer park murder story” – Friedkin has battled an old adversary: The ratings board. “The ratings board, to me, is a joke,” he said. “I never thought we’d get an NC-17, but I don’t mind the fact that we did. I had a film called Cruising that I took back there 50 times, 5-0, before they gave it an R.” Still, Friedkin will gladly accept his NC-17. “If we had done that with Killer Joe , it wouldn’t be here tonight; it would be playing in a shorts festival on YouTube.” NEXT: enjoy a Movieline 9 of highlights, anecdotes, and assorted moments from Friedkin’s appareance at SIFF ’12.
The Cannes Film Festival revealed its 2012 lineup this morning in Paris, with a competition heavy on male auteurs — and films featuring Croisette-ready stars like Robert Pattinson ( Cosmopolis ), Kristen Stewart ( On the Road ), Brad Pitt ( Killing Them Softly ), Shia LaBeouf and Tom Hardy ( Lawless ). Lee Daniels’s Precious follow-up The Paperboy (starring Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman) is also among the 22 films screening in competition, along with Wes Anderson’s opening night film Moonrise Kingdom . Other competition highlights include new work from veterans David Cronenberg, Michael Haneke, Ken Loach, Cristian Mungiu, Thomas Vinterberg, Walter Salles and Abbas Kiarostami. They are joined by fellow Cannes returnees Bernardo Bertolucci and Takashi Miike, who will screen their new films out of competition. And 2012 Sundance Film Festival competition winner Beasts of the Southern Wild by Benh Zeitlin joins the festival’s Un Certain Regard lineup along with 16 other titles. Competition : Moonrise Kingdom by Wes Anderson (Opening Film) Amour by Michael Haneke The Angels’ Share by Ken Loach After The Battle by Yousry Nasrallah Beyond the Hills by Cristian Mungiu Cosmopolis by David Cronenberg Holy Motors by Leos Carax The Hunt by Thomas Vinterberg Killing Them Softly by Andrew Dominik In Another Country by Hong Sang-soo In the Fog by Sergei Loznitsa Lawless by John Hillcoat Like Someone in Love by Abbas Kiarostami Mud by Jeff Nichols On the Road by Walter Salles The Paperboy by Lee Daniels Paradise: Love by Ulrich Seidl Post Tenebras Lux by Carlos Reygadas Reality by Matteo Garrone Rust and Bone by Jacques Audiard Taste of Money by Im Sang-soo You Haven’t Seen Anything Yet by Alain Resnais Out of Competition : Thérése Desqueyroux by Claude Miller (Closing Film) Me and You by Bernardo Bertolucci Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted by Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath, Conrad Vernon Hemingway & Gellhorn by Philip Kaufman Midnight Screenings: Dario Argento’s Dracula by Dario Argento Ai To Makoto by Takashi Miike 65th Birthday: Une Journée Particuliére Un Certain Regard : 7 Days in Habana by Benicio del Toro, Pablo Trapero, Julio Medem, Elia Suleiman, Juan Carlos Tabio, Gaspar Noe, Laurent Cantet 11.25 The Day He Chose His Own Fate by Koji Wakamatsu Antiviral by Brandon Cronenberg Beasts of the Southern Wild by Benh Zeitlin Confession of a Child of the Century by Sylvie Verheyde Después de Lucia by Michel Franco The Pirogue by Moussa Toure La Playa by Juan Andrés Arango Laurence Anyways by Xavier Dolan Le grand soir by Benoit Delepine, Gustave Kervern God’s Horses by Nabil Ayouch Loving Without Reason by Joachim Lafosse Miss Lovely by Ashim Ahluwalia Mystery by Lou Ye Student by Darezhan Omirbayev Trois Monde by Catherine Corsini White Elephant by Pablo Trapero Special Screenings : A Musica Segundo Tom Jobim by Nelson Pereira Dos Santos The Central Park Five by Ken Burns, Sarah Burns, David McMahon Polluting Paradise by Fatih Akin Journal de France by Claudine Nougaret, Raymond Depardon Les Invisibles by Sebastien Lifshitz Mekong Hotel by Apichatpong Weerasethakul Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir by Laurent Bouzereau Villegas by Gonzalo Tobal
“Going into a conversation where you’re defending Adam Sandler is normally not going to work in your favor. I learned this six years ago when I was doing my shift hanging out with Holocaust survivors, and one of the old guys actually turned to me and said, ‘This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” and this was coming from a man who was in Auschwitz. There was no way I was going to try to defend the merits of Sandler talking gibberish to a room full of men who lived through one of the darkest periods in all of humanity. If he thought Sandler making a bottle of shampoo battle a bottle of conditioner was bad, then I had to agree.” [ Splitsider ]
The Tribeca Film Festival has announced The Avengers as the closing-night selection of its 11th annual event, where Joss Whedon’s summer superhero blockbuster will have its New York premiere on April 28 — and for a good cause, according to Marvel and fest organizers. “Honoring the spirit of the Tribeca Film Festival, the screening will allow the opportunity for Marvel’s The Avengers to celebrate everyday heroes from police agencies, fire departments, first responders and various branches of the U.S. military,” reads a statement just over the transom at ML HQ. “These local heroes will have an opportunity to attend the screening and meet the cast.” Marvel Studios’ producer Kevin Feige adds: “We all know and love our iconic Super Heroes, but when it really counts, it’s our real-life heroes who save the world every day by making it a better place for all of us.” Whedon, meanwhile, reacted with customary cheekiness: “Showing at Tribeca is both an honor and a double homecoming for me, who grew up in Manhattan, and for the movie, which wrapped production there. I’m thoroughly psyched to be closing the festival with our intimate little think-piece.” More to come at Movieline as Tribeca gets underway next month. Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
SXSW 2012 marked the starring screen debut of model-turned-actress Dree Hemingway – daughter of Mariel, great-granddaughter of Ernest , and at 24, a veteran of the fashion world — as an airy Los Angeleno named Jane who befriends a cranky senior citizen (85-year-old newcomer Besedka Johnson) in Sean Baker’s Starlet , a surprisingly sweet tale comprised of a series of moving, naturalistic episodes … and one infamous hardcore sex scene. But as much as Starlet is a fantastically observed introduction to Hemingway, who possesses Evan Rachel Wood ’s preternatural poise and Daryl Hannah ’s leggy looks, sitting down with her in Austin – and indulging in a post-interview round of karaoke together — offered greater insights into one of the more talked-about but hard-to-talk-about films of the fest. For starters: Movieline learned that Hemingway does a mean Pat Benatar. But not everything comes as easy as belting out the power warble of “We Belong” in an afternoon karaoke session with someone you’ve only just met; from Starlet ’s hardcore sex scene (shot with professionals) to its likely NC-17 rating to the tricky task of discussing it without divulging too much, Hemingway and director Baker ( Prince of Broadway ) have tangled with a number of challenges on the road to getting their film, which also stars Stella Maeve and James Ransone, out into the world. That said, Starlet is a film whose secrets are minor but impactful in the grand scheme of things, at least in how they inform their two central characters. Hemingway’s Jane is a twenty-something L.A. transplant who lounges around in short shorts with her toy Chihuahua, Starlet, and her pothead roommates in the San Fernando Valley. Besedka’s Sadie is a grumpy old lady trying to shut the world out of her lonely, isolated existence. The two meet by chance when Jane buys a thermos from Sadie at a garage sale, then discovers thousands in cash hidden inside; she returns, worming her way into Sadie’s life as she struggles to come clean about the money, and the rest… well, the rest is best discovered on your own. [ GALLERY: See which stars too SXSW 2012 by storm ] So what else should you know about Starlet and its star? SKYPE, THE YMCA, AND CASTING STARLET ’S TWO LEADS Although she’s been a runway and fashion model since her 2009 debut, Hemingway attended RADA for acting and says her dramatic interests predated her modeling career. Though she’s appeared in small roles in a few projects to date, Starlet marks her first star turn. “I grew up on my mom’s film sets, so it was kind of a natural instinct for me. And I’ve always kind of been an attention whore,” she laughed. “Or more of a performing whore? I said to my manager, who kind of found me and whom I met through Bruce Weber, actually, I said, ‘Don’t worry — there’s going to be one director who’s going to see something in me and really want me to be in their film.’ Then I met Sean [Baker] and we instantly connected over a Skype video call, and I read his script and fell in love with it immediately.” Meanwhile, co-star Besedka Johnson, who makes her own screen debut here at the age of 85, always wanted to be discovered – and was finally found by Starlet ‘s casting director at her local YMCA. (Johnson earned a special SXSW Jury recognition for her performance in the film.) WHAT HOOKED HEMINGWAY ON STARLET – AND WHAT IT HAS IN COMMON WITH SOFIA COPPOLA’S SOMEWHERE Hemingway described what grabbed her most when reading Baker’s script. “I love the connection that Sadie and Jane have. It’s very awkward and weird and there’s a funny side and a sadness and a realness to the movie,” she said. “I was telling Sean that one of my favorite movies of 2010 was Somewhere , and I kind of got that feeling from the movie a little bit. I like the weird silences and the realness of the people. And the nice thing about working with Sean is that I never worked with somebody who just got it, completely trusted me and wanted to know my opinions on things, which is amazing because sometimes you have so much to say and you just can’t get it out there.” YARD SALES AND PORN STARS, TWO GREAT TASTES… The film was conceived of by Baker (who co-scripted with Chris Bergoch) out of the confluence of two disparate ideas: The real life story of a friend who happened upon a small fortune in a yard sale find, and the intriguingly mundane private lives of porn stars Baker had met while casting for his MTV show Warren the Ape . Porn actors Asa Akira, Manuel Ferrara, Kristina Rose, and Jules Jordan appear in cameo roles in scenes in one subplot that portrays the matter-of-fact business side of the adult industry. “That’s the thing that was nice about the portrayal in the movie,” said Hemingway. “Yes, these girls have these jobs. I think the nice thing is these girls are really normal – I mean they’re normal, and there’s a fucked-upness about it, but I think there’s also a deeper inner story to it.” ABOUT THAT HARDCORE NC-17 SEX SCENE… Baker originally envisioned the film’s much talked-about sex scene as a hardcore sequence using real porn actors. Adult actress Zoe Voss served as consultant and body double on the film, and helped advise a nervous Hemingway the day of her big scene. “I literally sat down next to her and I was like, ‘I somehow have forgotten that I had ever had sex before,’” she recalled. “I was like, ‘ What do I do ?’” Her only previous point of reference was a nude photo shoot she’d done for an art magazine (“It was so beautiful and not sexual at all”), but Starlet ’s big scene was far more daunting. “I had freaked out and there was all this stuff going on in my head because I’m not somebody who likes to watch porn, it freaks me out a bit, I don’t know why,” she said. “But talking to Zoe, who is the sweetest person ever, she’s like, ‘Dree, it’s normal. You deep breathe when you have sex, do this when in doubt,’ throwing different things at me.” Baker, meanwhile, isn’t concerned about the potential challenges his film might face with an NC-17 rating, which it would most likely earn. “This is how I see it: The state that we’re in right now with independent films, the best case scenario, which is like one percent, is a Blair Witch or Paranormal Activity that gets out and makes a hundred million dollars,” he explained. “But for the most part independent films are going to play, best case scenario, strongly in the metropolitan areas and then do well on VOD. I don’t see how a scene like that can hurt that model.” MODELING VS. ACTING, PHOTOGRAPHY VS. FILM Hemingway, who continues her acting career with a role in Hervé Mimran and Géraldine Nakache’s French film Nous York (which also stars Sienna Miller and John Cameron Mitchell), sees acting as a natural offshoot of her fashion work. “I kind of got into modeling because I was obsessed with people’s fashion and style, and I think it was more me being interested in how people kind of rearrange themselves,” she said. “That kind of goes for acting as well. I love watching people and I can kind of sit in a room and observe for a really long time. I was a ballet dancer for 15 years, so modeling was an aspect that could bring both together — dance and acting — because I think for every shoot you have a different character in mind that you’re trying to portray for the photographer, who is like the director… I didn’t really get into it until recently because I didn’t think I was ready in life experience to just do that yet.” TAKING CUES FROM ACTRESS MOTHER MARIEL While Hemingway is following in the footsteps of her mother Mariel and late aunt, Margaux, she intends to carve out her own path. Still, she’s well-versed in her mom’s film work and looks to her bold career choices as inspiration. “I want to do my own thing, but if I had the opportunity to do the kinds of things she’s done…” she mused. “My mom had balls, to be honest. She went for big things that were like, wow — Star 80 was very bold; Personal Best was the first movie that really touched based on lesbian issues; Manhattan , and her character in that, is one of my go-to movies for if I feel like I need to be real.” One major difference: Hemingway is commanding her own foray into acting, whereas her mother was “pulled” in. “The reason she got into acting was because Margaux was doing Lipstick and they couldn’t find the girl to play her sister,” she said. “They literally grabbed my mom, and my mom tells me that she went and saw the movie, got so mad at my grandpa and her dad and was like, ‘I didn’t know I was being raped in this movie!’ And he’s like, ‘Why did you think you were running away?’ She’s like, ‘I wouldn’t have done this film if I had known!’ But then, Manhattan [happened] and it all kind of fell into place.” Stay tuned for more on Starlet , which does not yet have distribution. Read more from SXSW 2012 here . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
This week at SXSW Movieline caught up with director Gareth Evans, whose Indonesian martial arts actioner The Raid: Redemption is set to knock your socks off later this month courtesy of Sony Classics. (Haven’t heard of the martial arts form silat? You will, come March 23.) With his film steadily collecting kudos left and right, Evans is already thinking ahead to his Raid sequel (working title: Berandal ), and an insane, dangerous-sounding four-on-one car fight he plans on working into the mix. First up, though, is the U.S. remake currently in the works at Screen Gems. The original film worked with the unique (and relatively new to most audiences) martial arts form silat , employed dynamically in a fairly basic setup: A SWAT team trapped inside a tenement building locked down by a vicious gangster must fight their way out. The American remake will build on the elements of The Raid , with Evans on hand as executive producer and Raid stars/fight choreographers Iko Uwais (who plays hero Rama) and Yayan Ruhian (who steals scenes as the sadistic Mad Dog) working on the remake’s fight choreography. “There will be elements of silat in there, which is kind of cool because there’s a respect for the original,” Evans said. “And I’m curious because the thing is yes, silat is an Indonesian martial art, but it’s practiced all over the world. There are schools of silat in London, there are schools of silat in America, there are schools of silat in France, and they have international championships as well. So there are a lot of people that know silat around the world, so it’s not a far-fetched idea that someone in America could know silat, the same way that it’s not far-fetched for a guy in America to know kung fu or muy thai.” While screenwriter Brad Inglesby has been recruited to script the remake, a director has yet to be found. Whoever it is, Evans isn’t worried about passing the reins to another filmmaker’s vision. “For me it’s like this: the storyline and the central concept is streamlined,” he explained. “It’s a very straightforward action film. So there’s room for improvement, and I think that director, whoever it is, has to be given the kind of creative freedom to push it in whatever direction he wants to push it and not have somebody standing over his shoulder saying, ‘You can’t do this, or you can’t do that.’ I think it should be that person’s decision.” After his Raid promotional tour is done, Evans will turn to pre-production on the sequel, with plans to begin filming next January. But how do you follow a film that’s already packed with non-stop, relentless, wall-to-wall, inventive action? “By going in a slightly different direction,” he teased. “If I try to replicate and copy it’ll fall on its ass, so I want to do something kind of different. We’re going to take the story out now and go onto the streets. So everything that was scary about that building and about that boss is small fry compared to the gangs we meet in the sequel — now we meet the people who let him have that building. And we expand the world out, we explore certain characters that were kind of hinted at in this but not expanded upon, and we ramp up some of the set pieces as well.” Evans’s Raid films will always retain their focus on silat, only showcased within different environments. Like, for example, the limited confines of a moving automobile. “We’ll have one fight scene,” Evans said, “a four-on-one fight inside of a car, and Iko’s going to be kicking people out through the windows, and it’s going to be nuts. What we’re doing now is we have to figure out how to shoot that without killing anyone. “Once we get that sorted,” he continued with a laugh, “then we’ll start shooting that.” Read more from SXSW here . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
It wasn’t tough to spot Channing Tatum or Jonah Hill at the after party following the SXSW premiere of 21 Jump Street ; they were the ones, beaming unselfconsciously in the middle of the crowd, wearing bicycle-cop uniforms. More specifically, wearing their costumes from the movie, in which they play a pair of bumbling rookie policemen sent undercover to high school — a set-up that so delivers beyond its premise that the ’80s Johnny Depp TV series adaptation is actually one of the best new films of 2012, comedy or otherwise. Sony’s March 16 release had screened a handful of times for press leading into the SXSW premiere, establishing surprisingly strong word of mouth for months. Catching up with 21 Jump Street directors Chris Miller and Phil Lord after the film’s equally supportive public debut found the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs helmers in fantastic spirits, and with good reason: If audiences follow the lead of critics and SXSWers, then 21 Jump Street could become a deserving critical and commercial hit in the mold of last year’s Austin breakout Bridesmaids . Credit goes to an exceedingly sharp script and great chemistry between leads Hill and Tatum, whose onscreen two-man comedy team rapport carries what might, in a lesser film, have been reduced to a fairly banal by-the-numbers plot (the pair go undercover in search of the source of a powerful and dangerous drug making the rounds in the high school set). The reboot takes its job seriously than, say, the Starsky and Hutches that came before it; if you’re wondering how the hell anyone could justify resuscitating a decades-old idea from the depths of nostalgia, for example, the film beats you to it. If you’re skeptical of seeing Ice Cube as Tatum and Hill’s angry black police captain, Cube’s Captain Dickson clears the air in his very first scene. But 21 Jump Street isn’t just clever in its construction and aware of its own inherent vulnerabilities to criticism — it’s pretty hilarious to boot. Two of the best jokes in my estimation come not from Tatum, who is genuinely funny and, more importantly, comfortable flexing his comic muscles here, or Hill, but from supporting players Dave Franco as the crunchy, Berkeley-bound popular kid and 21-year-old lady rapper Rye Rye as a fellow undercover Jump Streeter. The film even manages to use Rob Riggle well without succumbing to the near-universal rule that almost any comedy featuring the (talented!) Riggle turns out to be kind of terrible. Curse broken! Monday’s 21 Jump Street debut also marks yet another strong showing for a studio release at SXSW after Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s Cabin in the Woods and the surprise horror entry Sinister . Drop back by Movieline on Thursday for Stephanie Zacharek’s review of 21 Jump Street , and catch up on all of our SXSW 2012 coverage here . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Each year SXSW plays host to a slate of risk-taking fare of all kinds, from true indie offerings to upcoming studio releases geared to a slightly more open crowd, and the 2012 film line-up features no shortage of movies poised to earn that precious film festival commodity: Positive buzz. But some projects have more at stake than others — say, Joss Whedon and Drew Goddard’s long-awaited Cabin in the Woods , Will Ferrell ‘s Spanish-language comedy Casa de mi Padre , or the directorial debut of actor Matthew Lillard . On the eve of SXSW 2012 (which runs March 9-17 in Austin, Texas), check out the ten SXSW titles with the most to prove going into their festival debuts. Click to launch the gallery! Want more? Read all of Movieline’s SXSW 2012 coverage and follow us on Twitter .
