Like Monday’s entry Shark Kill, Spring Break Shark Attack was a made-for-television movie, in this case a CBS Sunday night attempt at counterprogramming Desperate Housewives. This gambit is made explicit in the opening scene, in which four MILFy types floating in an inflatable raft enjoy cheese, wine and catty remarks before being devoured by sharks. Cute, sure, and emblematic of the overall disposability of the project; watching the movie four years later, divorced of its original context, I would never have made the connection if not for my diligent research on behalf of this column.

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“There are no sharks in Venice,” we are told several times in the movie entitled Sharks in Venice. There are a few other things that aren’t found in Venice, most notably the cast of Sharks in Venice (that is, unless their scenes were shot on a soundstage in Venice, California). Said cast is headlined by Stephen Baldwin, best known nowadays as the Jesus freak of the Baldwin clan, but here playing David Franks, a low-rent Indiana Jones-style college professor/ archaeologist/ swashbuckler who jets to Venice, Italy with his fiancée when he learns his father has gone missing on a diving expedition.

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Once again it’s every Discovery Channel fan’s favorite week of the year – Shark Week! For the 22nd straight year, the nature network gets to have its cake and eat it too by airing (and re-airing and re-airing) documentaries with terrifying titles like Great White Appetite and Sharkbite Summer, all in the name of shark conservation. You see, these so-called man-eaters are simply misunderstood! Here at the Screengrab in Exile we’re all about misunderstanding, so we choose to celebrate Shark Week with a quintet of sharksploitation movies…just when you thought it was safe to go back to the video store.

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In anticipation of this week’s release of Funny People (look for a review at Nerve on Friday), here are two reviews of recent Adam Sandler films, as well as a feature on the whole school of man-child comedy, originally written for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

You Don’t Mess with the Zohan
118 min., PG-13 (crude and sexual content throughout, language and nudity)
Grade: ** (2 out of 5)

If anyone has been eagerly anticipating a zany summer comedy about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the wait is finally over. But those of you hoping said comedy would possess some sort of daring satirical insight on the matter are bound to be disappointed, unless you find endless jokes about hummus to be particularly revealing about Middle Eastern culture.

Adam Sandler is Zohan, a deadly Israeli intelligence agent who knows how to party. When he’s not out capturing terrorists or bending Arab agents into pretzel shapes, he enjoys disco dancing, playing hacky sack on the beach and barbecuing in the nude. When Zohan is called back early from vacation to lead a mission against Palestinian terrorist the Phantom (John Turturro) – whom he had just captured three months earlier, and who has just been released again in a prisoner exchange – he begins to see his work as essentially pointless.

Zohan’s real dream is to go to American and pursue a career in the cutting and styling of hair. Inspired by his prize possession, a 20-year-old edition of the Paul Mitchell guide to hairstyling, the feared agent fakes his own death in battle with the Phantom. Hitching a ride in a plane’s baggage compartment, he makes his way to New York, trading in his shaggy ‘70s-era Bob Dylan look for a “silky smooth” hairdo that would be state-of-the-art in 1986.

Unfortunately for Zohan, this is 2008 and the Paul Mitchell salon has no use for his services. He has to swallow his pride and settle for sweeping up hair in a shop run by the lovely but Palestinian-born Dalia (Emmanuelle Chriqui). When one of Dalia’s stylists unexpectedly quits, Zohan finally gets his chance. His unorthodox methods – which include deep, sensual scalp massage, plenty of pelvic thrusting and even a little boom-boom in the back room – prove to be a hit with the older ladies who frequent the shop.

Zohan has achieved his dream, but his old life returns to haunt him when he is recognized by taxi driver Salim (cq) (Rob Schneider), whose goat Zohan had stolen years earlier. Even as Salim and his Arab friends plot vengeance against Zohan, a ruthless developer stages several hate crimes in the neighborhood, in hopes of driving Dalia out of business.

Just as Zohan’s retro hair styling, Daisy Duke short-shorts and passion for ‘80s dance pop mark him as a throwback, the movie that bears his name is something of a nostalgia trip for Sandler and his fans. Teaming once again with Happy Gilmore director Dennis Dugan, Sandler has returned to his very silly roots. Zohan relies on broad slapstick fight scenes, comical accents and plenty of crude sexual humor. There are more than a few laughs in the movie (the script is by Sandler, SNL vet Robert Smigel and the omnipresent Judd Apatow, who has spread himself so thin by now, he can probably slide under his office door in the morning), but there’s an awful lot of infantile nonsense, too. Unless you find words like ‘baba ganoush’ inherently hilarious, the nearly two-hour running time proves to be a punishing length.

As for the Israeli-Arab theme, let’s just say that it’s handled in a rather simplistic manner. It’s always nice to reinforce the idea that most folks of Middle Eastern descent are just regular people like you and me, since some people still haven’t gotten the memo. But the movie still traffics in some very familiar stereotypes, and the ending – which sort of boils down to “the white man hates all of us anyway, so we might as well be friends” – probably won’t qualify Zohan for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Bedtime Stories
104 min., PG (some mild rude humor and mild language)
Grade: ** (2 out of 5)

Moviegoers have now been treated to two sides of Adam Sandler in 2008, and it’s hard to say that either is preferable to the other. The summer saw the release of You Don’t Mess with the Zohan, which found Sandler in lewd-and-crude slapstick mode. Now, just in time for the holidays, family-friendly Sandler is here to babysit your kids for a couple of hours while you’re returning gifts at the mall.

In Bedtime Stories, Sandler is Skeeter Bronson, a handyman at the Los Angeles luxury hotel owned by germ-phobic magnate Barry Nottingham (Richard Griffiths). Skeeter’s father Marty (Jonathan Pryce) had previously owned a much homier mom-and-pop motel on the site, but sold out to Nottingham on the condition that Skeeter would one day manage the business.

That day may be on the horizon, as Nottingham is planning an even more extravagant resort, and he’s already rejected the theme proposed by current manager Kendall (Guy Pearce), who happens to be engaged to Nottingham’s Paris Hilton-esque daughter Violet (Teresa Palmer). He offers Skeeter a chance to compete with Kendall for the manager’s position by presenting his own ideas for the new hotel.

Skeeter has an ace up his sleeve: in the course of entertaining his niece and nephew with bedtime stories, he discovers that the made-up tales are predictive of events in real life. For instance, if nephew Patrick injects a rain of gumballs into a western yarn Skeeter is spinning, the following day will see a candy truck breaking down on an overpass and showering Skeeter with those very treats.

Skeeter attempts to direct the stories toward favorable outcomes for himself, such as wooing the kids’ teacher Jill (Keri Russell) and landing the hotel gig, but he can’t prevent the children from throwing unwelcome twists into the tales.

Bedtime Stories revolves around a concept that may have sounded great in the pitch meeting, but never got fully developed. There’s a first-draft randomness to the screenplay by Matt Lopez and longtime Sandler cohort Tim Herlihy; certain elements, such as a googly-eyed pet guinea pig, play like “trailer moments” that have been shoehorned into the proceedings. Russell Brand is a welcome source of quirkiness as Skeeter’s room service buddy, but he seems to be visiting from a different movie, as does Rob Schneider in a typically tone-deaf cameo in Native American garb. (Seriously, did Schneider save Sandler’s life in a fire or something?)

Sandler has more chemistry with the kids than with Russell, but ultimately he’s just playing the latest in a long string of hostile man-children. We’ve been here before, and we already know how this story ends.

MEN WILL BE BOYS

Forty is the new 30, 30 is the new 20, and men will be boys as long as they can get away with it. That’s the message lurking in a spate of contemporary comedies centered on American males in their mid-30s who resist the conventions and responsibilities of adulthood. At an age when their fathers were married homeowners with children and steady paychecks, these late bloomers are still living with their parents, couch-surfing with friends or starting their own fraternity houses.

The 2003 release of Old School, with its depiction of early mid-life crisis as nonstop toga party, can now be seen as the launching pad for the current trend. The success of Wedding Crashers last year established Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson as America’s favorite boys who refuse to grow up, and both have returned this summer in similar roles: Vaughn in The Break-Up and Wilson in You, Me and Dupree. Other usual suspects include Matthew McConaughey, seen earlier this year in Failure to Launch, and perpetual man-child Adam Sandler, now starring in Click. Filmmaker Kevin Smith’s sequel to Clerks carries the tagline “With no power comes no responsibility,” while the upcoming Edward Burns comedy The Groomsmen counters with “There’s a difference between getting older and growing up.”

How to explain this sudden surplus of thirtysomethings more likely to be seen playing videogames and doing keg-stands than changing diapers and pursuing the corner office? Let’s get the most obvious (and perhaps cynical) answer out of the way first: Old School grossed $75 million at the U.S. box office and nearly twice that amount in its DVD release. It was relatively inexpensive to produce and boasted a high concept premise that proved easy to replicate. Now the multiplex is overrun with guys incapable of acting their age, from Wilson’s Randy Dupree, the best man who overstays his welcome with his newlywed friends, to Sandler’s Michael Newman, who uses a universal remote to fast-forward through the tedious obligations of work and family.

As dopey as some of these comedies may be, however, they do reflect a societal shift that has taken place in recent years. According to a survey conducted by the University of Chicago in 2003, most Americans believe that adulthood begins at age 26. Baby boomers who were sent packing by their parents on their eighteenth birthdays have been much more open to letting their adult children live at home well into their twenties and even their thirties. Often there are sound economic reasons for this; sometimes it’s just sort of creepy and sad. (A short documentary about this trend included on the Failure to Launch DVD is far more interesting than the movie itself.)

Those who do leave the nest in a timely fashion are not necessarily in any hurry to put away childish things and assume the role of a traditional adult. Books with titles like Conquering Your Quarterlife Crisis clutter the shelves of the self-help section, and pundits have been busy coining new buzzwords like “adultescent” and “grup” to describe graying, paunchy guys who still wear Ramones t-shirts and ride their skateboards to the comic book store. Guys like, for instance, Kevin Smith.

The Clerks II director turns 36 next month, and despite having a wife, daughter and successful career, has not yet embraced a conventional adult lifestyle. “I guess I have kind of an extenuating circumstance, because I have this job that affords kind of eternal adolescence,” Smith said in a recent interview with the Star-Telegram. “So there’s no trigger to pull that says ‘OK, now you’ve got to grow up.’ But a lot of people in my age range – and a lot of people I know who don’t do what I do for a living – are also kind of in the weird same place where they, too have extended adolescence.”

Having achieved fame and fortune at a young age, actors like Wilson, Vaughn and Sandler have also been able to afford eternal adolescence, which is perhaps another reason these movies keep getting made. Their screen personas are perfectly suited to these man-child roles, and it’s not hard to believe that they see something of themselves in such characters. Yet the actual movies are rarely odes to the joys of staying forever young. The men who live like boys will eventually learn their lesson: by evading the hassles of adult life, they are also missing out on its richer joys. In the end, we know Owen, Vince and Adam will realize that it’s time to put away the beer bongs, sell the Star Wars action figures and become respectable members of society.

These third-act conversions inevitably feel obligatory and unconvincing, mainly because crude goofball comedies aren’t exactly the ideal medium for conveying life lessons on maturity. Who needs a lecture on adulthood from some guy who wrestles in a kiddie pool full of jello for a living? There’s something hypocritical about selling a movie to the public by exploiting its raunchy, juvenile elements – the sight gags and vulgar jokes that call out to the adolescent in us all – and then telling us to grow up already. Let’s face it: if we did that, Hollywood would be out of business in a week.

Sidebar: Case Studies in Adultescence

There has been an outbreak of adultescence (owenus wilsonitis) at the multiplex, but some cases are more severe than others. Here’s a breakdown of the various strains that have been identified.

Subject: Randy Dupree (Owen Wilson) of You, Me and Dupree

Diagnosis: Second-degree mooch

Symptoms: After losing his job, subject crashes on the couch of newlyweds Matt Dillon and Kate Hudson, extends his stay indefinitely, and nearly burns their house down.

Recommended Treatment: Forcible removal from the premises. Repeat as necessary.

Subject: Tripp (Matthew McConaughey) of Failure to Launch

Diagnosis: First-degree mooch

Symptoms: 35-year-old subject still lives at home with parents Kathy Bates and Terry Bradshaw. They want him out.

Recommended Treatment: Hire Sarah Jessica Parker to lure him out of the nest. If that doesn’t work, one visit to Bradshaw’s “naked room” should do the trick.

Subject: Andy Stitzer (Steve Carell) of The 40-Year-Old Virgin

Diagnosis: Late bloomer

Symptoms: Subject’s apartment contains custom-made videogame chair and thousands of vintage action figures, including Aquaman and the Six Million Dollar Man’s boss, Oscar Goldman. No woman has ever crossed its threshold.

Recommended Treatment: Nookie

Subject: Ben Wrightman (Jimmy Fallon) of Fever Pitch

Diagnosis: Fenway fanatic

Symptoms: During the late fall and winter months, subject is a perfectly well-adjusted math teacher. During the spring and summer, no woman can replace the Boston Red Sox in his heart.

Recommended treatment: Prolonged exposure to Drew Barrymore and a World Series championship

Subject Dewey Finn (Jack Black) of School of Rock

Diagnosis: Terminal rockage

Symptoms: Subject is unemployed, has been kicked out of his band, and is living rent-free with best friend Ned and his girlfriend. This does not rock.

Recommended treatment: Pose as a substitute teacher and share the power of rock with the youth of America

Sorry for the long hiatus! I was on vacation and so forth. Here are some the things I would have linked to, had I been posting here:

The South Lamar pub crawl

New Releases: The Ugly Truth plus three

New Releases DVD: Watchmen plus three

New Releases: (500) Days of Summer plus three

New Releases DVD: Mad Men plus three

New Releases: Bruno plus three

Look for a new Unwatchable as soon as later today, plus a special week-long feature next week at the Screengrab in Exile!

This week’s new releases at Nerve. Good news for those of you who hate this format (the feedback has not been, uh, overwhelmingly favorable), we’ll be tweaking it over the next few weeks. Please bear with us during this time of transition!

Each Thursday this summer we’ll hop in the time machine and jump back twenty years to see what was new and exciting at the neighborhood moviehouse this week in…The Summer of ’89!

Batman

Release Date: June 23, 1989

Cast: Jack Nicholson, Michael Keaton, Kim Basinger, Robert Wuhl, Pat Hingle, Jack Palance, Billy Dee Williams

The Buzz: Hot young visionary director of Beetlejuice brings America’s favorite comic book hero to the big screen

Keywords: Vigilante, Joker, Gadget Car, Christ Allegory, Urban Renewal, Evil Clown

The Plot: A vigilante patrols the Gotham City night. Is he man or bat? Or man dressed as bat? (SPOILER: He’s man dressed as bat.) Gotham crime boss Carl Grissom (Jack Palance) learns his mistress is two-timing him with his right-hand man Jack (Jack Nicholson), so he sets him up by notifying the cops of Jack’s raid-in-progress on a chemical plant. The Batman arrives on the scene, there’s a struggle and Jack gets dropped into a vat of chemical waste. His skin and hair are discolored, his mind is warped, and thus is born the clown prince of crime, the Joker. Even as he romances reporter Vicky Vale (Kim Basinger) in his civilian guise as billionaire Bruce Wayne, Batman must find a way to foil the Joker’s reign of terror.

The Test of Time: As I mentioned when I launched this feature back at the Screengrab, I spent the summer of 1989 driving around the country with a friend, seeing America as well as a shit-ton of movies. The most anticipated of these was, of course, Batman; as a lifelong Bat-freak, I’d been eagerly awaiting the movie for more than a year. (In fact, as I wrote here, I’d been waiting for any Batman movie for most of my life.) I was not disappointed; in fact, my cohort Jim and I saw Batman three or four times during our summer-long sojourn (I have an especially fond memory of seeing it at a drive-in somewhere in the southwest on a double bill with the long-forgotten Don Johnson action spectacular Dead Bang). So I was somewhat taken aback when I finally returned home after three months and discovered that every single person I knew had hated it. My attempts at defending it were met with derision. “It’s deliberately unexciting!” I was informed. How could I have been so wrong?

I’d like to be able to tell you that the test of time has proved me right, but well…not so much. I’ll still defend Burton’s expressionistic Gotham City, Nicholson has a few moments of inspired insanity (but in truth, only a few), and for at least the first half-hour or so, Burton has a firm handle on the material – the story unfolds in a satisfyingly spare, comic book-y fashion. Once the Joker stops woop-wooping at himself while reading the paper and actually puts his silly schemes into motion, however, the movie becomes harder to defend. For one thing, it has way too much Robert Wuhl. No movie needs this much Wuhl. The Bruce Wayne/Vicky Vale romance is painfully dull, the “we made each other” duality dance between Batman and the Joker is woefully undeveloped, Gotham City appears to have about seventy-five residents, the script has more clunkers than a Yugo dealership, and the Prince songs, it must now be admitted, are horrible. (Apparently Burton thought so, too, since they’re buried so deep in the sound mix.) Of course, what really makes Batman look bad from a 2009 vantage point is The Dark Knight, in which Heath Ledger’s Joker proved to be the lightning to Nicholson’s lightning bug. It’s hard to imagine now that Burton’s Batman played as a “dark” take on the material, but I guess everything’s relative. Anyway, to all you people who tried to set me straight back in 1989…okay, you may have had a point.

Quotable Quote: “This town needs an enema!”

2009 Equivalent: This summer’s superhero origin story, Wolverine.

Previously on Summer of ‘89: Star Trek V: The Final Frontier

Those of you eagerly awaiting October’s Lebowski Fest have no doubt registered for Friday’s Big Lebowski Scavenger Hunt, and (if you’re smart) are already preparing for glory by securing a few no-brainer items, like a White Russian and a Creedence tape. But as much as we love the film and fear inciting random acts of nihilism from its fervent fans, we have to ask: Why does Lebowski always get the love?

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OK, I’m a day late linking to this one, but I was out at the lake with no internets this weekend, so that’s just the way it’s gonna have to be. From Decider, here’s I know I’m going to be the bad guy here: inappropriate Father’s Day movies. I see that a commenter has noted that I forgot to include Dutch. Sorry for the oversight!

Vampires, two-headed sheep, hulking ape-men covered in thick, matted hair—sounds like another night on Sixth Street. Thanks to the Museum Of The Weird, however, you can now enjoy these bizarre sights without the aid of a half-dozen Jell-O shooters at Dizzy Rooster.

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