Pink Slips
by Don Larsson

Romantic comedy isn't easy. Two recent films demonstrate that, unlike science, formulas cannot produce chemistry by themselves. Maid in Manhattan is the more banal of the two - a Cinderella story about a maid and single mother (Jennifer Lopez) at a posh hotel who gets mistaken for an upper-class guest by the heir to a political dynasty (Ralph Fiennes) on the fast track to the Senate. He, of course, is charmed by her unusual frankness and insight into ordinary folks. She wants to get into hotel management but finds her life and career complicated by her own attraction to the Senator-manqué. You know the rest of the story already. And that's the problem.

Lopez is agreeably feisty in her role, and Fiennes, who can be unbearably droopy at times, has a charming spark to him, but nothing happens in this film that isn't pure, uncomplicated fantasy. J-Lo has somehow worked her way up out of the projects to live in a duplex that even in Spanish Harlem can't come cheaply these days, but there's no hint of how or why she did that. Her ambitions are dampened by her mother, but what might have been a crucial (if completely familiar) argument between mother and daughter comes so late that there's no reason to care about it at all.

There is no tension at work - no rivals for the management job, it appears - because, it seems, J-Lo is just so nice that, like Stuart Smalley, gosh-darn it, people just like her. (Despite her own refusal to be taken as a "stereotype," the other maids were ordered from the stock catalogue of Sassy Working Class Pals - one even sounds like Thelma Ritter). And when our Cinderella gets invited to the ball, a swank affair by the Egyptian temple at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, her fairy godmothers appear to be legion, extending even to the hotel shops where gowns and diamonds are easily trotted out for loan.

The only real conflict in the film is with the inevitable Bitch Rival (Natasha Richardson, who is too good for this kind of stuff), more pitiful than funny as a character. Bob Hoskins is utterly wasted as the hotel's head butler, who also oversees Lopez's training. Wayne Wang directed from a John Hughes story, but despite some glamorous New York settings, there's no real reason to care about these characters, and no real reason to see the movie itself. I had more fun listening to the giggling whispers of a pack of teenaged girls who occupied half the theater when I saw it.

On the other hand, there is a good movie struggling to get out of Two Weeks Notice, but it never manages, and is thus a greater failure than Maid in Manhattan. Sandra Bullock plays a social activist lawyer who winds up being recruited to work for Hugh Grant, the younger brother and front man for a real estate law firm. Grant is a superfical ladies' man who has no real purpose in life and coasts by on charm. He is charmed by Bullock's unusual frankness and insight into ordinary folks - and her turn with a phrase for his speeches. Eventually, he relies on her as personal counselor for every decision he makes, right down to his choice of tie. She sees him as a guarantee to preserve an old building and current community center on Coney Island that his firm plans to develop.

There are some potentially good ideas in here: conflicts of generational ideals (Bullock's character has Sixties-liberal parents), romance versus class conflict (the very heart of most romantic comedies), and so on. But the story, from director Marc Lawrence (who penned Bullock's Miss Congeniality) is a mess. Grant has no real reason to hang arond the office at all, but despite his avowed lack of purpose, he seems to work harder than his brother. Bullock spends far more time picking ties and writing speeches than doing actual legal work. And the introduction of an All About Eve-ish rival (Alicia Witt) looks like an afterthought, which comes to nothing after all.

Unlike Maid in Manhattan, there's no real effort by the stars. Grant is back to blinking his eyelids to indicate charm, and Bullock's knockabout physicality seems labored. (Oops! Scene's lagging. Time to knock over a plant!) There's another key scene at a posh party (with Bullock in a drop-dead gown that nearly steals the movie), another set of misunderstandings, another happy ending, etc., etc. What seems to plague both of these films and so many like them is their patent insincerity. There was a time, long ago, when the portrayal of class confict actually had some bite - in films by Capra and LaCava, when stars like Jean Arthur and Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck actually seemed to have some connection with the characters they played. The formula can still work to some extent, as Grant and Meg Ryan and even Bullock have proved from time to time. But the fizz is out of these bottles. The formula is flat.

Just when I was lamenting yet again the seeming inability of contemporary filmmakers to pull off a simple formula successfully, along comes a film that's pure formula as far as the plot goes, but is quite successful at what it really wants to convey - the joy of drumlines. Now, before you decide to stop reading, rest assured that I'm not talking about geology (that's "drumlins") or the stuff that most of us endured in person or as spectators at too many football game halftimes in high school and college (woolen uniforms on hot days, off-key renditions of Sousa played without enthusiasm). This is the real thing - the color, beat, swing and funk of bands at historically black colleges.

Charles Stone's Drumline centers on a rivalry between two such colleges, one led by a pure showman, the other by his idealistic former protégé (Orlando Jones) who is dedicated to music and education over pure entertainment. Enter a Talented But Sassy Drummer (Nick Cannon) recruited from up north, who has trouble being a team player. He spars with the too uptight but Dedicated Band Leader (Leonard Roberts), eventually putting him on the sidelines. A synthesis occurs: the TBSD learns respect and team effort; the DBL learns to loosen up; and all comes out well. There is also an obligatory romance and some subplots with roommates, but you know you've seen all this before.

The thing is, this time the formula is done reasonably well. There are none of the welling gaps of plot coherence and logic that sink Maid in Manhattan and Two Weeks Notice. There are no huge pretensions to relevance. The relatively fresh faces (Cannon, with his own show on Nickelodeon; Jones, the virtual library in The Time Machine; and Zoë Saldana as the love interest) fill their parts intelligently. The cinematography and editing keep our concentration where it belongs - on the bands and their music. There's a lot of playing, a lot of marching, and a lot of spirit, which makes the whole thing worthwhile.

Almost every Fourth of July, I am reminded of my own cultural gaps when, before the fireworks begin, the Lancers appear. That's our own award-winning local drum-and-bugle corps. They always come to the field out of the gathering darkness, preceded by the echoing booms of their own bass drums, the rattle of snares, and the telegraphy of xylophones. Taking their places on the campus football field, they go through arcane rituals involving the waving of flags, the twirling of guns and batons, and the playing of brass arrangements of patriotic tunes, light classics, and popular songs. All is geometrical, ordered, and precise. All the participants are locked in a universe of their own. Then bass, snare, and xylophone lead them from the field, always to a standing ovation. They seem to be quite good at what they do, but even after all these years, I'm still not sure just what it is that they do, what meaning is encoded in those rituals, those geometries, those flags and rifles. In Drumline, though, you won't have to wonder. Even more ordered, even more precise in their way than the Lancers, these bands have a spark, a verve that is to ordinary bands what a gospel choir has to the Isaac Watts hymns of my youth. Virtually unheralded, this relatively low-budget affair is a genuine sleeper - a surprise hit that pays off better than any number of more costly affairs.

©2002 Don Larsson
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