Young Québécois filmmaker Xavier Dolan won major praise back in 2009 for his debut I Killed My Mother which debuted in Cannes and winning awards at festivals there and around the world. His second feature Heartbeats also headed to Cannes and received theatrical release in the U.S. last year. And Dolan’s third film, Laurence Anyways debuted in Cannes last month. But it his first film evaded U.S. audiences outside the festival circuit until now. It had initially been picked up by now defunct specialty distributor Regent Releasing and when the company went belly up, the film’s rights in the States seemed resigned to the company’s fate, but Paris-based sales agent reclaimed rights to the critically acclaimed film and it will now receive its long-awaited release in the U.S. via Kino Lorber Films. Also starring Dolan, the film revolves around Hubert Minel, a 16-year-old Québécois living in suburban Montreal with his single mother, Chantale (Anne Dorval). The feature beautifully captures the anxieties of a mother-son relationship, as well as their inability to re-affirm their love for each other against the backdrop of bullying, the difficulties of single parenting, and many specific challenges facing queer youth. “When we learned in Cannes that this stunning debut film by the then 20-year-old Xavier Dolan was newly available,” said Kino Lorber’s Richard Lorber in a statement. “We jumped at the chance to pick it up. Having also seen his latest film at the festival, it convinced us even more of his unique talent and the importance of finally bringing this brilliant first work to screens across the U.S.” Kino Lorber is planning a full theatrical release for the film during the fall of 2012, before making it available in all home video and VOD platforms.
Young Québécois filmmaker Xavier Dolan won major praise back in 2009 for his debut I Killed My Mother which debuted in Cannes and winning awards at festivals there and around the world. His second feature Heartbeats also headed to Cannes and received theatrical release in the U.S. last year. And Dolan’s third film, Laurence Anyways debuted in Cannes last month. But it his first film evaded U.S. audiences outside the festival circuit until now. It had initially been picked up by now defunct specialty distributor Regent Releasing and when the company went belly up, the film’s rights in the States seemed resigned to the company’s fate, but Paris-based sales agent reclaimed rights to the critically acclaimed film and it will now receive its long-awaited release in the U.S. via Kino Lorber Films. Also starring Dolan, the film revolves around Hubert Minel, a 16-year-old Québécois living in suburban Montreal with his single mother, Chantale (Anne Dorval). The feature beautifully captures the anxieties of a mother-son relationship, as well as their inability to re-affirm their love for each other against the backdrop of bullying, the difficulties of single parenting, and many specific challenges facing queer youth. “When we learned in Cannes that this stunning debut film by the then 20-year-old Xavier Dolan was newly available,” said Kino Lorber’s Richard Lorber in a statement. “We jumped at the chance to pick it up. Having also seen his latest film at the festival, it convinced us even more of his unique talent and the importance of finally bringing this brilliant first work to screens across the U.S.” Kino Lorber is planning a full theatrical release for the film during the fall of 2012, before making it available in all home video and VOD platforms.
Also in Thursday’s quick round up of film news, ARC Entertainment is bringing Fat Kid to the States, Meryl Streep gives her two cents on big studio flops, and audiences just are not heading to theaters frequently like they used to. Fat Kid to Hit North America ARC Entertainment has picked up North American rights to director Matthew Lillard’s Fat Kid Rules the World . Starring Jacob Wysocki ( Terri ), Matt O’Leary ( Natural Selection ) and Billy Campbell ( The Killing ), the film won the Narrative Feature Audience Award at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival. The film revolves around two guys who form a strong friendship after one saves the other from suicide. Around the ‘net… Meryl Streep Has Words for Studio Tentpole Failures The actress had advice for studio execs behind big budget box office flops like Battleship and John Carter : “Listen to the ladies.” THR reports . Waiting for the Avengers Directors Cut Following in the footsteps of other high stakes box office titles, Joss Whedon is rumored to be reinstating footage into a three-hour version of the blockbuster that has taken in billions worldwide, The Guardian reports . Only 3% Rate Moviegoing as Frequent Form of Entertainment Only two years ago, 28% of U.S. consumers said “cinema/movies” were a frequent source of entertainment, according to PR outfit Edelman which released the statistics, Deadline reports . LA Film Festival Lures Woody Allen to Opener The director is, not publicly anyway, a frequent visitor in Los Angeles, but LAFF managed to get the filmmaker to its opening night. THR talks to the festival’s head programmer on how they made it happen. Follow Brian Brooks on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Also in Thursday’s quick round up of film news, ARC Entertainment is bringing Fat Kid to the States, Meryl Streep gives her two cents on big studio flops, and audiences just are not heading to theaters frequently like they used to. Fat Kid to Hit North America ARC Entertainment has picked up North American rights to director Matthew Lillard’s Fat Kid Rules the World . Starring Jacob Wysocki ( Terri ), Matt O’Leary ( Natural Selection ) and Billy Campbell ( The Killing ), the film won the Narrative Feature Audience Award at the 2012 SXSW Film Festival. The film revolves around two guys who form a strong friendship after one saves the other from suicide. Around the ‘net… Meryl Streep Has Words for Studio Tentpole Failures The actress had advice for studio execs behind big budget box office flops like Battleship and John Carter : “Listen to the ladies.” THR reports . Waiting for the Avengers Directors Cut Following in the footsteps of other high stakes box office titles, Joss Whedon is rumored to be reinstating footage into a three-hour version of the blockbuster that has taken in billions worldwide, The Guardian reports . Only 3% Rate Moviegoing as Frequent Form of Entertainment Only two years ago, 28% of U.S. consumers said “cinema/movies” were a frequent source of entertainment, according to PR outfit Edelman which released the statistics, Deadline reports . LA Film Festival Lures Woody Allen to Opener The director is, not publicly anyway, a frequent visitor in Los Angeles, but LAFF managed to get the filmmaker to its opening night. THR talks to the festival’s head programmer on how they made it happen. Follow Brian Brooks on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
To say that That’s My Boy is a step up from the recent output of Adam Sandler and his company Happy Madison Productions really is to suggest only that the film isn’t likely to be screened as some sort of new Guantanamo interrogation technique. Jack and Jill , Zookeeper , Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star — these movies aren’t merely bad, they’re sandpaper-on-skin excruciating, unfunny to the point of inspiring hostility toward whoever’s chosen to make them. Sandler, once upon a time, was king of a winning kind of anarchic, gleeful stupidity — Billy Madison holds up so well (seriously, it does) because it feels like it’s just every idiotic gag that he and his buddies could come up with while crowded around a table littered with bongs and beer cans, crammed into an hour and a half. These late features have an undercurrent of misanthropy — their silliness isn’t inclusive, its confrontational and unpleasant, as if it was a chore to have to be bothered to actually make the movie in order to get everyone paid. That’s My Boy , which was directed by Sean Anders (of Sex Drive ) from a script by Happy Endings creator David Caspe, isn’t nearly as problematically hateful (with the exception of the introduction, which I’ll get to later). It’s a celebration of vintage ’80s dirtbaggery, a beer-guzzling, bird-flipping rebuke to contemporary calorie-counting, omega male meekness that finds Sandler back in only somewhat worse-for-wear form as an agent of chaos. He plays Donny Berger, an aging Massachusetts party boy (the phrase “wicked” gets a workout) whose onetime fame/infamy has faded along with his income until he finds himself facing three years in jail for failing to pay his taxes unless he can come up with $43,000 by next week. Donny’s only got a few bucks to his name and no prospects to speak of except for his long estranged son, played by Andy Samberg — and while he’s reluctant (and skeptical) about going to the kid for money, he cuts a deal with trashy talk-show host Randall Morgan (Dan Patrick) to squeeze one last bit of cash out of his past celebrity by agreeing to stage a family reunion with the boy and his mom. Donny’s child has grown into a neurotic, successful hedge fund manager who now goes by Todd — he’s rejected the name (Han Solo) given to him by his young dad, as well as the man’s negligent parenting techniques and lifestyle. Todd is set to marry Jamie (Leighton Meester) out on Cape Cod, where they’re all staying in the luxurious summer home of Todd’s boss Steve (Tony Orlando). Thanks to a wedding announcement in the paper, Donny knows where to find them, and turns up with an overnight (garbage) bag, forcing Todd to hurriedly declare Donny his long-lost best friend, as he told everyone his parents both died in an explosion when he was young. Straight man isn’t a good use for Samberg’s comedic gifts — he seems too at ease with himself to play what’s essentially a role for Michael Cera (whom he does eerily channel in some of his early scenes). Todd is awkward and uptight — he carries an extra pair of underwear around with him as a kind of security blanket — and likes to show off his ability to multiply large numbers in his head (he always precedes his answers with a robot-style “bleep bleep bloop”), but Samberg still comes across as the guy most likely to have a joint to share at the back of a party rather than as a fawning nerd. That’s My Boy is Sandler’s show, anyway, and his Donny somehow charms everyone with his constant beer-drinking, dick jokes and insistence on bringing back the Budweiser commercial catchphrase “Whassup?” Donny loves strip clubs (his favorite also serves breakfast) and his old pal Vanilla Ice (who is to this movie what Al Pacino was to Jack and Jill , albeit with less range). And he slowly worms his way back into his son’s heart and just a little bit into ours, culminating with a bachelor party montage that’s the film’s high point and its biggest celebration of trashed troublemaking. That’s My Boy is Sandler’s raunchiest movie — its approach to sex is enthusiastic and juvenile and the opposite of the squeamishness of Bucky Larson . Three-ways are had with grandmothers, wedding dresses are defiled, sticky post-masturbatory tissues are flung everywhere and a late twist takes the film into what has to be new territory for a gross-out comedy. While maybe half of the jokes actually land, there’s a cheery expansiveness to these antics — everyone’s better when being a sloppy but genuine mess than when being a controlling phony. In other words, this is a film that finds poorly chosen, impulsive back tattoos endlessly hilarious. Which brings us back to the intro, and the reason Donny is famous for the first place — a sequence that may kill the movie for some before it even gets going. That’s My Boy starts in 1984, when Donny’s a junior high student played by Justin Weaver who ends up getting seduced by his teacher Miss McGarricle (Eva Amurri Martino). She takes his virginity and carries on an affair with him until they’re discovered by the entire school at an assembly — at which point the kids and faculty members applaud young Donny for his prowess in “living the ultimate teenage boy’s fantasy.” It’s this Mary Kay Letourneau-style scandal that makes Donny into a celebrity and a hero for men everywhere because he managed not just to sleep with his teacher but to knock her up before she heads to jail. This isn’t a scenario completely resistent to comedy — 30 Rock included a similar storyline (using the same famous actress the film does for its present-day version of the seductress — if you’re unfamiliar, the reveal’s worth leaving her name unmentioned), and it was funny and oddly sweet. But here, both the focus on the world’s celebration of this act of statutory rape and the actual portrayal of an adult woman coming on to a 12-year-old boy in the name of laughs is spectacularly uncomfortable and troubling. That’s My Boy insists that Donny was not a victim, that what happened was every boy’s dream, but the film makes the (unintended?) case that he was permanently warped by the incident, left stunted and half-formed. No matter how much good-hearted licentiousness follows in the rest of the movie, the opening sequence brings a unshakable sourness to the whole affair. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
