Oct. DVD Releases: X-Men and more
Posted on October 4, 2014 by bob in DVD
X-Men: Days of Future Past (PG-13) 
If you’re a fan of the X-Men comics, movies, etc., chronicling the sagas of assorted misunderstood superheroes and the baddies within their gifted ranks, this one will probably satisfy many of your visceral cravings, even if the exposition grows tedious, and the time-travel plot is, well, another time-travel plot. That inherently means logical problems will abound for those who care about the left-brain component of such tales.
Several of the action sequences are first-rate, especially one early scene featuring Quicksilver in slo-mo that so masterfully mixes mirth and mayhem, I kept hoping he’d show up for the later proceedings. Without him, the film seemed every bit as long as its 130-minute running time. Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine is the one sent back 50 years from a dark, dystopian future to prevent Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence, who succeeded Rebecca Romijn as the lethal blue babe) from killing a scientist (Peter Dinklage) whose legacy would have eventually led to the demise of all our iconic mutants, and a slew of humans with connections to them. A couple of historic figures and references add brief bits of amusement, but not enough.
The movie will certainly spawn more sequels, with one already slated for 2016. But this script concept raises an annoying question, the extent to which succeeding in this mission would nullify all the other X-Men adventures in the handful of films we’ve already seen.
Obvious Child (R) 
Donna (Jenny Slate) is an endearingly funny, self-conscious, insecure New Yorker, working days at an ill-fated, used bookstore, prepping for her regular standup gigs at a hole-in-the-wall club for the undiscovered. Her life is her material, with no boundaries, airing details about everything from her body parts (and their exudates) to her boyfriend hoping for the intersection of truth and comedy while baring her soul. That alienates her guy, triggering a depression dive that her gay pals (Gaby Hoffman, Gabe Liedman) and divorced parents (Richard Kind, Polly Draper) can barely dent. A one-night stand with a farm-fresh fellow (Jake Lacy) who seems way too mainstream for her Brooklyn hipster milieu ends in pregnancy. The rest of this low-key indie dramedy is mainly what she’ll do about it, including whether to even tell the father.
The dialog – particularly Donna’s on-and off-stage jokes – is surprisingly bawdy, considering her innocent demeanor. She’s something of a Sarah Silverman wannabe without ever declaring herself as such. The openness of her act is often more shocking than amusing, especially while wallowing in her grief over being dumped. Gillian Robespierre’s feature debut as both writer and director is fairly impressive, but Slate’s sweet vulnerability is the real emotional driver of this engine. The film is an extension of their 2009 collaboration on a short using this title and premise.
The plot rambles a bit in an apparent prioritizing of setting and mood over the story and its cast. Kind and Draper deserved more of a chance to contribute. Slate’s future may lie in gal-pal supporting roles, in the fine comic tradition of character actors like Joan Cusack, Kathryn Hahn or Judy Greer, who invariably brighten any of their movies, no matter how brief their time upon the screen.
Mr. Peabody & Sherman (PG)
Oh, the curse of nostalgia and high hopes. When this cartoon canine genius and his “pet boy” blessed TV screens from 1959-61 as a regular feature in the Rocky and Bullwinkle series, it was a revelation, at least for this impressionable youth. The irreverent humor and groaner puns were unprecedented in such ostensible kiddie fare. One segment inverted beloved fairy tales; this one made history fun and silly, as Peabody and Sherman time-traveled in their Wayback Machine to assure the correct outcomes in bizarrely amusing circumstances. Jay Ward’s creations were the South Park of that era.
Unfortunately, several attempts to stretch these short, simple gems into movies have not gone well. 1992’s live-action incarnation of villains Boris Badenov and Natasha Fatale was a complete flop; same for Brendan Fraser’s gig as amazingly earnest, yet equally inept, Canadian Mountie Dudley Do-Right seven years later. Even worse was Robert DeNiro’s campy turn as Fearless Leader in The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle a year after that. This one’s less of a bummer than those, but still short of what franchise fans pine for.
This film stretches the episodic concept by fleshing out backstories for Mr. Peabody’s body of creative work and his legal relationship to Sherman, and putting them into a contemporary urban setting. Sherman goes to school, gets into trouble as a misfit with his peers, leading to a chaotically up-tempo adventure. The script delivers too few laughs to honor its roots, or meet the demands of a feature-length film. The visuals are, of course, vastly superior, but that’s more of a perk for today’s youngsters than for Ward’s first-generation admirers. Regular readers may note similarities to my review of last year’s updated remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, which surely fared better among those who hadn’t read Thurber’s short story or seen the Danny Kaye movie version. If this isn’t just another mediocre animated feature, piggy-backing on earlier glories, then I may be reaching the flower of my curmudgeonhood.
Mark Glass
Mark Glass is an officer and director of the St. Louis Film Critics Association.
