The Baxter
|
List Price: Our Price: $1.66 You Save: $2.28 (57%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of The Baxter
Movie Review: good laughs for dry humor
Summary: 4 Stars
It's a great movie for fans of Stella. A lot of dry humor and acting so terrible and corny that you must laugh.Movie Review: The Traditional Romantic Comedy's Back-Story
Summary: 3 Stars
The Baxter starts where most romantic comedies end: the leading man charges into the wedding scene to declare his love for the heroine--just as she is about to marry someone else. They run into each other's arms and live happily ever after. This movie leaves the "stars" of most romantic comedies to their own devices and instead follows the Baxter (the man the leading lady was willing to settle for since she couldn't be with her true love). So begins the story of Elliot Sherman (played by writer/director Michael Showalter), a tax accountant who never manages to get the girl.
A fan of romantic comedies, Showalter hoped to give a nod to the genre's zany movies of the forties with The Baxter. For inspiration, Showalter also looked to the modern embodiment of romantic comedies: Sleepless in Seattle. The idea for The Baxter was born when Showalter wondered what happened to Bill Pullman's character in Sleepless--the man Meg Ryan left to be with Tom Hanks.
Elliot is ready to give up on relationships until he meets Caroline Swann (Elizabeth Banks), a glamorous magazine editor. Elliot and Caroline are preparing for their upcoming nuptials when Caroline's high school sweetheart Bradley (Justin Theroux) returns. As Elliot desperately tries to avoid another rejection he runs into Cecil Mills (Michelle Williams), a unique office temp. With Cecil's help, Elliot realizes that he needs to take a risk and assert himself if he wants to stop being a Baxter. A series of comical catastrophes follow only to prove that, in the end, nice guys can finish first. In short, The Baxter is a romantic comedy for anyone who has ever been dumped.
This movie is hilarious and had this reviewer laughing from beginning to end. The Baxter features an excellent cast--from the leading roles down to the minor characters--, which is given every opportunity to shine. As Elliot becomes convinced that Caroline will dump him, Showalter perfectly conveys the mayhem and desperation Elliot feels as he tries to keep Caroline away from Bradley in the hopes of living happily ever after.
The Baxter is, first and foremost, about a Baxter who has no luck in love. But it is also a movie for anyone who suspects they might be slightly out of step with the world at large. This movie focuses on the quirky people that make life interesting but don't always get leading roles in Hollywood. Every character in The Baxter is at least a little neurotic, a little odd. It's these quirks that make the characters, and the movie, so lovable.
Movie Review: Comedic Chinese Food
Summary: 3 Stars
The Baxter is Michael Showalter's exegesis on the chronic leavability of guys who get ditched at the altar. Is it fate? Pure lack of game? Or do these guys just have a knack for clinging onto women fate has earmarked for another?
Fortunately, Showalter has seen fit not to inflict upon us yet another blithe romp where the nerdy guy finally gets the clue to ditch the horned-rims for contacts and all of a sudden he's the next coming of Brad Pitt. And the result is a quirky comedy with an original and fresh perspective of a classic storyline.
Where the film neatly avoids falling the course of a modern Pygmalion myth, however, the inescapable notion that our Baxter, Eliot (Showalter), is playing a role in someone else's story haunts the film, leaving us somewhat apathetic to whether or not his bride will ultimately abandon him or not. While Eliot blusters and fumes about the reappearance of his bride-to-be's ex-flame, Bradley (Justin Theroux), we can't help but wish we were seeing Bradley's campaign to reclaim his lost love. After all, it's clear that Eliot's redemption from Baxterhood lies not in his remedial machismo, but rather in his chick-picker. As it would be problematic to watch a war movie about a guy who's (although unwittingly) on a mission to help out the Third Reich, it's little more compelling to watch a film about a guy who spends the whole time fighting for a woman who's wrong for him. By the time Eliot clues in to the identity of his soul's lost love, the film has been so preoccupied with the wrong girl that there's barely enough time to tap the right one on the shoulder, much less fight for her.
In the meantime, some deftly penned characters, enthusiastic performances and truly funny moments fuel the underpowered storyline. Showalter infuses enough intelligence into Eliot to make him sympathetic, and a parade of great supporting talent makes gems out of several moments. As Showalter himself admits, "The best line is always an improvised line," and The Baxter definitely has its fair share. And it is in these moments that The Baxter tastes satisfying in the theatre. We're just a little hungry on the way home.
Movie Review: The story is its own worst Baxter
Summary: 3 Stars
A "Baxter" is basically a loser, the guy who not only never gets the girl, but has to hear others applaud when he loses her to hero of the story. And since "getting the girl" is basically the same as "getting the story", the "Baxter" is fated to become the footnote in the movie. The conceit behind "The Baxter" is that an entire romantic comedy has been written around the genre's most disposable character type (the guy that the movie's hero beats out in the last 5 minutes of the movie). Unfortunately, the conceit is something of a Baxter itself.
The story follows our Baxter, Eliot Wilbur Sherman in the few weeks before his doomed marriage to an unbelievably beautiful, intelligent and successful woman named Caroline (Elizabeth Banks - crazy Beth from "40 year Old Virgin"). The script doesn't do much to explain how Eliot managed to land Caroline (or is that "how Caroline got stuck with Eliot?") because there's no point to that. We pretty much know how the movie is going to end - the script beats us to the punch by opening the story at the altar, when Eliot does indeed lose Caroline to Bradley, her former too-good-to-be-true boyfriend. The twist is that the story also offers us an offbeat musician named Cecil who's fated to become Eliot's true love once he's realized that there is life after Baxter-hood. The story then re-winds back to those precious weeks before the wedding when we see Bradley slowly reenter Caroline's life and lay the seeds for his triumph at Eliot's altar.
The problem with this flick: like Eliot, it's sort of a Baxter itself. As the story progresses, Bradley edges Eliot out of the way, and since the story is told mostly from his POV, it's soon as marginalized as Eliot. It didn't take long before I began to feel as if there was some other movie going on somewhere else telling the exact same story from Brad's POV. Unfortunately, unlike Eliot, "The Baxter" doesn't have a Cecil of its own, a redeemer of a sort to save it from its incipient Baxterhood.
"The Baxter" unfortunately is successful only in proving just why Baxters shouldn't get the girl or our attention.
Movie Review: A terrific (if not quite actor-proof) script
Summary: 3 Stars
There are two very enjoyable things about "The Baxter." One is the marvelous original music by composer Theodore Shapiro, especially the final track, "Hopeful." The other is imagining the many other ways this film could be done.
The characters are well drawn and the script is tight as a drum. That makes the film very nearly actor-proof. If this were a studio picture (and this were 1996), Ben Stiller might be cast as Elliott, Cameron Diaz as his fiance, and Drew Barrymore or Joan Cusack as the sensible, soulful temp. (I'm not saying that would be a good film; only that many actors could be slotted into these precisely imagined roles without much difficulty.) Or imagine (even) seeing it played by an all-Australian cast. No matter: the story would still hum along like well-oiled machinery.
Yes, the script is a delight. Unfortunately, the visuals are no match for it. The film is boxy, poorly lit, and dull. I had a hard time keeping my eyes on the screen. (Come to think of it, "The Baxter" would make a fine radio play.)
The cast is, by and large, a treat, with some seldom-seen actors getting to show their chops. Michelle Williams and Justin Theroux are particularly strong. These fine players are undermined, however, by the performance of Mr. Showalter (who also wrote and directed) in the lead. As played here, Elliott is hyper-annoying: full of physical tics, dull, and so homely it is not believable that either of these smart, attractive women would voluntarily spend more than three minutes in his presence. It doesn't help that he croaks his lines in a voice like an injured parrot. Showalter doesn't act so much as he telegraphs -- with excruciating deliberateness -- various states of panic, embarrassment, and quirkiness.
A wonderful script that should rightly be brought to teeming life. In this rendering, however, we have to settle for a persistent vegetative state.