This Review Reveals Minor Details About the Plot.
Beam It Up, Scotty
Plot Overview
Valley yuppies Tim Dingman (Ben Stiller) and Nick Vanderpark (Jack Black)
are best friends working at 3M where the latter's promotion is delayed for
his lack of focus (“You're a dreamer.”) One of his crazy ideas
an aerosol dog poo vaporizer (Vapoorizer) works and catapults him to instant success
leaving his neighbor living under his nose envious to the nth degree.
Perhaps some judicious management of their predicament can restore the
damage done their friendship.
Unremarked upon is the sword of Damocles
hanging over these chumps: the flight path of airplanes seen and heard
traversing the sky above their homes and the thicket of power lines
above them. Noise nuisance from the one can over time weaken the immune
system, and radiation from the other can cause cancer. Modern technology
acting unseen or unheard can be deadly. Nobody knows where the poo
goes after it has been sprayed, but hidden dangers can take it off
the shelf.
Making things disappear is nothing
new to science, and this twist is just the latest. Indigenous Americans
invented maple syrup, and in the 19th century, the advent of horse- or
ox-drawn carts speeded delivery of raw maple sap to the evaporizers
for processing. Nick's horse Corky was the friends' shared pet
representing this technology. When some syrup at breakfast got
spilled onto the cloth, unseen fingers motivated by a sweet tooth
dabbed it up and, presto, it disappeared.
Come the twentieth century and we've got
liposuction. Where did those extra inches around the waist of Tim's
wife Debbie (Rachel Weisz) disappear to after their ship came in? Not saying.
There's a new coffeepot sitting on the counter, resembling a rocket ship. Space, the final frontier. The demo of dog turds being sprayed away looks just like a transporter beaming stuff up in Star Trek. “Up and out,” is how Nick puts it. It's future science courtesy of co-worker Dimitriov (Manny Kleinmuntz) in research who was ahead of his time.
Then Nick's thick wife Natalie (Amy Poehler) decides to run for state
senate. Her platform is the environment. Their bug house
in the yard keeps insects out, but the screens let in cooling air
in the evening. The old method of disposing of a dog's business involved
scooping it into a plastic bag where the trapped warm air
around the turd will keep it moist & pliable unlike the cold,
hard turd on the ground that's lost its heat due to convection and/or
conduction as in a Berger novel where, “the parrot suddenly
ejected a spurt of liquid excrement, which solidified instantly
when it hit the newspapers on the cage floor, forming another
oyster-colored clump with seeds, chaff, and gravel” (113.) Any
radiant heat escaping through the thin clear plastic around the turd
doesn't amount to squat, unlike how 19th century science would
have it. Back then they thought hot houses worked by minimizing infrared
radiation through the glass siding. Science writer Alan Siddons in
a chapter on “A Long List of Misconceptions,” writes of
that theory, “It is 19th century poppycock” (62.)
In reality, greenhouses merely suppress convective heating
loss, preventing the heated air from dissipating. It is air that's
trapped, not radiation; glass's response to infrared (IR) has nothing to do with it
(63.) (The
futuristic movie “The Martian”
shows Earth scientists having got wise to greenhouses staying
warm from blocking convection, not radiation.) That 19th century science
is the root of our manmade, greenhouse gas, global warming,
cockamamie theory. Acknowledge some variation in the earth's
orbit, which NASA says is cyclical, and email-gate,
and you've got a theory easy to debunk by a half-brained housewife.
Natalie's big rally occurs next to a humming power substation, a river with ripe unmentionables floating in it, and sign-waving picketers shouting from the overlooking highway, "WHERE DOES THE SH!T GO?" It looks like the gig is up.
Ideology
“Envy” is an object lesson in avoiding both extremes à la (Prov. 30:7) “Two things have I required of thee; deny me them not before I die:”
(Prov. 30:8-9)
“Remove far from me vanity and lies: give me neither poverty
nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me: Lest I be full, and
deny thee, and say, Who is the LORD? or lest I be poor, and steal,
and take the name of my God in vain.” Here is a success based
on vanity: “Where does it go?” and in Tim's case on lying
when his new drinking buddy J-Man (Christopher Walken) has him
“shake things up” and it backfires. J-Man is a bum
acquainted with poverty and Nick is rich. “Food convenient for
me” is displayed in the regular fare of a middle class suburbanite:
pancakes, cereal, and a TV dinner. The bum munches on pretzels &
crackers, the rich man is served semi-gourmet flan.
Wealth causes Nick to neglect the almighty
who wasn't high on his agenda to begin with. He and Tim fly to Europe
to expand internationally. “I'm gonna kick ass in Rome,”
he says. On the flight there, Tim—now a partner—suggests
they, “Target Zoos.” Between the Church and the zoos,
at least one of them is, “full of poop.” Likewise,
J-Man doesn't let God take up much room in his life to begin with,
but having avoided getting busted by the fuzz on his larcenous scheme
to help Tim he remarks, “Dumb Smokey,” i.e. holy smokes!
Production Values
“” (2004) was directed by Barry Levinson. It was written by Steve Adams. It stars Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Rachel Weisz, Christopher Walken, and Amy Poehler. Hey, all the actors were outstanding, every last one of them. Stiller and Black made a memorable duo. Walken was a standout as a dyed-in-the-wool bum.
MPAA rated it PG–13 for language and sexual/crude humor. The cinematography was solid, the pacing was fine, the tension was palpable, the children were credible, the housewives were good looking, and the jabs at politicians were subtle. The humor I would characterize as continental, in the background rather than the typical in-your-face American fare, which results in an unsophisticated audience being put off. There is no actual mention made of the frequent noisy jet fly-overs or of the power lines festooning the property, so without a lurking sense of hidden menace, the film might seem too vanilla. It's 1 hour and 39 minutes long.
Review Conclusion w/a Christian's Recommendation
I really liked this movie and was impressed by its imaginative writing. It didn't do very well at the box office, but audiences are fickle. See it if you think it would appeal to you.
Movie Ratings
Action factor: Decent action scenes. Suitability for Children: Suitable for children 13+ years with guidance. Special effects: Average special effects. Video Occasion: Good for Family Groups. Suspense: Keeps you on the edge of your seat. Overall movie rating: Five stars out of five.
Works Cited
Scripture is taken from the King James Version. Pub. 1611, rev. 1769. Software, Print.
Ball, Timothy, & Alan Siddons, Claes Johnson et al. Slaying the Sky Dragon: Death of the Greenhouse Gas Theory. Mount Vernon: Stairway Press, 2011. Print.
Berger, Thomas. Sneaky People. Copyright © 1975 by Thomas Berger. New York: Simon and Schuster. Print.
bibles.n7nz.org