By Adam Long

This Means War

The Secret World Of Arrietty

February 23, 2012     

This Means War (** ½)

A suspension of disbelief is technically defined as a formula for justifying the use of non-realistic elements in a work of fiction. I think it can also be defined as asking an audience to believe that a character who looks like Reese Witherspoon can’t get a date in a major city in Southern California. Seriously, does anyone actually believe that she would even have to resort to computer dating, as her character does in the film? In reality, all she would have to do is walk down the street, strut her stuff, and within ten minutes have enough dating material to last for several months with no repeat performances needed. If only life were that easy for those of us who are less physically gifted.

The whole plot of This Means War hinges around the plot contrivance that Witherspoon’s character, Lauren, can’t get dates and finds not one but two potential matches after only a few hours on a wannabe match.com type website. Things then go from bad to worse, plot complication-wise, when it turns out that both of her beaus, Tuck (Tom Hardy) and FDR (Chris Pine), are not only long time friends but also work for the CIA and have desks that face one another. What’s a good looking  but lonely girl with a blossoming career supposed to do?

Her best friend, Trish (Chelsea Handler), who got Lauren into this mess by setting up her online profile unbeknownst to her, suggests she date both guys and see what happens.

Pine, Witherspoon & Hardy in This Means War

Lauren decides to do just that, not realizing that the joke is on her since both Tuck and FDR have acknowledged to one another that they are dating the same girl. They then use all of the surveillance equipment at their disposal to spy on one another in an effort to sabotage each other’s chances with Lauren. With friends like this, who needs an enemy?

Judging by the amount of time that FDR and Tuck have at their disposal to chase Lauren around, it would appear that the CIA has little or nothing to do. If one were to apply this film’s logic to the real world, the government would probably want to consider closing down the CIA altogether, but I digress. The two men do little if anything of significance except sit around talking machismo talk about who’s going to wind up first in bed with Lauren. Then, in the final act, a villain who appears at the beginning of the film reappears. He’s introduced early on because you know his services will be required later on as a plot complication in order to help Lauren decide whether Tuck or FDR is the man for her before the film is over. He’s never really a threat, just a convenient plot device. At least he gives Tuck and FDR something to actually do besides mentally undressing Lauren while sitting at their prospective desks.

This Means War may be a ridiculous film if one were to judge it by its plot, but it goes down easy enough. The stars seem to have some chemistry and there are a few chuckles to be had here and there. It’s a light soufflé of a film that is best digested with little to no thought of any actual resemblance to reality. I can’t really recommend it but I certainly didn’t hate it. It falls somewhere squarely in the middle for me. - Adam Long

The Secret World of Arrietty

By DAVID GERMAIN

AP Movie Writer

Considering the eccentric, almost psychedelic fantasy worlds created in Japanese animation master Hayao Miyazaki’s tales, a story of tiny people living beneath the floorboards of a house seems almost normal.

``The Secret World of Arrietty,’’ from Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli, also is a pleasant antidote to the siege mentality of so many Hollywood cartoons, whose makers aim to occupy every instant of the audience’s attention with an assault of noise and images.

Slow, stately, gentle and meditative, ``Arrietty’’ nevertheless is a marvel of image and color, its old-fashioned pen-and-ink frames vividly bringing to life the world of children’s author Mary Norton’s ``The Borrowers.’’

Already a hit in Japan, ``Arrietty’’ has undergone the typically classy English-language transformation that Disney renders to Studio Ghibli’s films, among them Miyazaki’s Academy Award-winning ``Spirited Away.’’

What U.S. audiences get is a hybrid, the grandly fluid picture-book imagery of first-time feature director Hiromasa Yonebayashi, a veteran Studio Ghibli animator, merged with an English-language rendering of Miyazaki’s screenplay, Oscar-winning sound designer Gary Rydstrom directing a Hollywood voice cast that includes Carol Burnett, Amy Poehler and Will Arnett.

‘Arrietty’ is a beautiful adaptation of The Borrowers

Previously adapted in the 1997 live-action slapstick comedy ``The Borrowers,’’ Norton’s stories follow the adventures of a family of teeny people who live off things scavenged from nature or from the oversized human world that’s unaware of the existence of this miniature race.

Spirited 14-year-old Arrietty (voiced by Bridgit Mendler, star of Disney Channel’s ``Good Luck Charlie’’) lives with her mom and dad (real-life couple Poehler and Arnett) and is about to join in on her first borrowing expedition to fetch back supplies from the ``human beans’’ living upstairs.

Yet Arrietty violates the rules, she’s seen by Shawn (David Henrie of Disney Channel’s ``Wizards of Waverly Place’’), a sickly youth who has come to stay in the country with his aunt.

What could turn into boy-meets-girl, boy-squashes-girl-like-a-bug instead becomes a sweet, chaste, sort-of first love story. Arrietty sheds her inbred borrower’s fear of humans, and Shawn proves a tender soul who understands the fragile existence of his small friend and her kind, doing what he can to help.

The filmmakers inject a bit of tension and some laughs through busybody housekeeper Haru (voiced with joyful, gradually increasing lunacy by Burnett), who sets out to capture the borrowers for her own mad purposes.

The women of ``Arrietty’’ definitely get the good parts. Mendler plays the title role with vivacity and a spirit of wonder, while Poehler manages nice laughs with her squawky, frantic vocals. Henrie and Arnett, on the other hand, are vocal rocks, solid but impassive, inexpressive. Arnett applies the same deadpan voice he uses to great comic result in live-action roles, but the effect falls flat without his own almost-smirking poker face to go along.

The movie also overdoses on sweetener with its saccharine theme songs, one co-written and performed by Cecile Corbel, one written and performed by Mendler.

The warm simplicity of the story and the cleverness and artistry of the animation make up for any vocal shortcomings, though.

It’s delightful, the ways the borrowers make essential tools out of found objects we take for granted, a leaf as an umbrella, nails to create stairs or staples to build ladders, strips of duct tape to help scale walls.

The wonder the film reveals in the mundane is what makes ``The Secret World of Arrietty’’ such a fantastic place to visit.

Three stars out of four.