(Spoilers for Mr. Brooks)
Dane Cook isn't funny. He's not funny when he does stand-up, he wasn't funny hosting Saturday Night Live, and his big movie wasn't funny either, and it's not just me that says so, nobody saw his movie, and even he hates his own exuberant frat boy, “it's funny 'cause I'm loud” material, saying he'd “rather learn brain surgery than do stand-up again.” (See? There is useful information in the pre-movie slide show.) Since he's so unfunny, I thought maybe he just needed a more serious genre. He didn't. In Mr. Brooks he plays a guy who witnesses a murder and enjoys the thrill so much he decides to join in, blackmailing Kevin Costner (and his imaginary friend, played with gusto by William Hurt) into taking him along when he kills people. Kevin Costner's not bad as Mr. Brooks, and William Hurt does pretty well with a slightly silly part, and the conversation between Costner and Hurt works as a way to get to the inner monologue of the deeply secretive Mr. Brooks. I was in the mood for a slightly overblown thriller, and for the most part I was okay with Mr. Brooks, but I couldn't avoid a strange twinge of embarrassment for being in the theater. That feeling really came from a couple of the supporting cast members, and associated subplots... there was just a little voice piping up on my shoulder asking “Why are you watching a Dane Cook movie?” I just couldn't take his whole overacting persona seriously, and he wasn't the only problem. Demi Moore has been the kiss of death on Hollywood movies for fifteen years, but has some sort of deal with Satan that required she be in this movie, cast as a not exactly believable tough-as-nails serial killer profiler who only works Portland's vast serial killer population. She tries to steal the movie with two subplots about an escaped serial killer who's after her and a former boytoy who's squeezing her for money, both of which have to be resolved by Mr. Brooks. It may have been some sort of warning to Ashton Kutcher, like “Don't get greedy, because I know some crazy-ass people like Kevin Costner who'll put a cap in your ass do a rain dance on your dead body,” but it does distract from the actually interesting plotlines of this movie. This is always the case when she's in a movie: her Tabloid Royalty status always overshadows her part, and she's not a good enough actress to disappear into a character, and as a result I can never take her seriously. It appears nobody else does either, since she's been the kiss of death at the box office in everything since A Few Good Men.
Danielle Panabaker has some nice scenes as Mr. Brooks' daughter with a few secrets of her own as she may have inherited her father's homicidal mania, but mainly I just liked her because she was a hot redhead. She features in the most powerful scene in the film, which would have been chilling if the filmmakers hadn't copped out and made it a bad dream, which again just made me feel more embarrassed for being there to see it. Really, there's a whole movie to be made about Mr. Brooks and his daughter with William Hurt as a venomous Mr. Snuffleupagus for Brooks to confide in, but he's the archetypal distracted father, not having time for his daughter because he has to rush out and help Dane Cook kill people, and set up Demi Moore twice to be murdered and framed for murder to get her off his trail, fake his death and set up Dane Cook to make his trail go even colder... and then he calls Demi Moore so she knows he's still alive, that Dane Cook's not the killer, and gets Demi more fired up about chasing him, so he can ask her a really dumb personal question. Somehow whenever Dane Cook and Demi Moore show up, this movie really starts to wobble off the rails.
As long as I'm talking about a failed serial killer movie, and since Amstelboy kept asking how this was last Christmas, I'll squeeze in here everything I have to say about Black Christmas, which was far more terrible. None of the excess of sexuality, nudity, and gore a trashy horror movie calls for, and certainly no pretense of quality, character development, or cinematography... just faceless characters talking about nothing and getting beheaded in the dark. Actually there was one memorable moment, since I only rented this to see what Michelle Trachtenberg was up to, because the jaundiced killer somehow manages to lop off her head with a pair of ice skates in a nod to Ice Princess. Other than that, I'm not sure what the point was of doing this remake.
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