GHOSTS OF MARS: Tide’s Up. Time to Stay Alive.

Ghosts of Mars (2001) – Directed by John Carpenter – Starring Ice Cube, Natasha Henstridge, Jason Statham, Pam Grier, Clea DuVall, and Joanna Cassidy.

Look, I have a lot of love for John Carpenter. I think his passion for film is every bit as strong as any other American cinematic auteur, and there’s so much passion in the way he makes movies that I can overlook a lot of the lack of refinement.

GHOSTS OF MARS puts that to the test.

This is a movie that was released in 2001 – and not because it was found in a vault with leftover films from the 1970s. But that’s what it looks like, with special effects that look decidedly old school. Maybe that was the intent or maybe that’s all they had in the budget, but for the first time in his career, Carpenter’s work feels a bit too anachronistic to overcome.

If the story, the dialogue, and the acting were exceptional, of course, I could get past the weak model work, but they’re all lacking, and for all of GHOSTS looking like a movie 20 years older than it actually is, it’s that failure of story, of dialogue, and of acting that sinks this film.

The plot is simple enough – Melanie Ballard (Natasha Henstridge) is a member of a police unit assigned to pick up prisoner Desolation Williams (Ice Cube). The team includes leader Helena Braddock (Pam Grier), new addition Nathan Jericho (Jason Statham), and two younger officers: Kincaid and Descanso (Clea Duvall and Liam White). They get into a train to head on out to the mining town prison where Williams is being held. When they arrive, the town is deserted except for a few deranged miners and some prisoners. It turns out the miners have been infected with a red cloud of badness full of disembodied spirits.

Williams’ crew tricks Jericho into letting them inside the prison, where they turn on the cops to let Williams out, except that Ballard locks them all up, which leads to Williams and Ballard cutting a deal. Then the cops and robbers team up to kill the possessed miners, who are more than happy to try and kill them back.

If you just talk it out, the story seems perfectly suitable, but for some reason Carpenter has decided to clunk up his film with all manner of flashbacks. The movie opens at the end of this mining colony adventure, as Ballard is the only person on the returning train. She’s called in for questioning and then tells us the inquisition panel her story. Which is fine, except that when we get into the story, the people inside it give us more flashbacks and it just gets too repetitive. It bogs the film down. Case in point – when the cops arrive at the mining colony, the team splits up. We stick with Ballard and Jericho and then later when they reconnect with Descanso, he relates what happened to him and we see it through a flashback.

Why? What’s wrong with following along with two subplots at the same time? Why get all of one, and then get all of the other one, when the two events were happening concurrently?

The characters are a problem, too, a condition that’s not helped by the acting. Statham is a decent enough actor, but Jericho is a horrid character, more interested in trying to get laid than anything else, even in the middle of a mission. Ice Cube is fine playing the sneering bad ass, but we’re told that Williams is this ultimate bad ass and then we never see it. Is Carpenter engaging in a critique of the Age of Hyperbole that we’re living in, or is it just a stupidly conceived character?

It’s the latter, I’m guessing.

The biggest problem is Henstridge’s Ballard, however. Cube at least has some real charisma to help him power through this role and overcome the script’s deficiencies, but Henstridge is a weak actress playing a weak character. That Ballard says stupid things is on Carpenter; that Henstridge delivers most of her lines as if she memorized them 10 minutes before the performance is on her. It’s a completely wooden performance in a film that’s desperately crying out for a charismatic lead. Maybe it wouldn’t have ultimately made a huge difference in the film, but if Cube and Henstridge switched roles, I think we would’ve seen an improvement.

There’s just so little chemistry anywhere in GHOSTS OF MARS that it makes for a hard watch. Now, there’s plenty of killing and action, so if you like post-apocalyptic movies, GHOSTS OF MARS will probably do the trick as a way to spend 90 minutes of your life and not feel totally cheated. (Well, it will probably do half the trick, but you get the meaning.) It’s not a horrible movie, but it’s certainly not a good one. Carpenter didn’t deserve to disappear for an entire decade (coming back with 2011′s The Ward) but he needs stronger material than GHOSTS to allow his strengths as a director to really come through.

21 JUMP STREET: Embrace Your Stereotypes

21 Jump Street (2012) – Directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller – Starring Jonah Hill, Channing Tatum, Brie Larson, Dave Franco, Ellie Kemper, Rob Riggle, Ice Cube, Nick Offerman, Peter DeLuise, Holly Robinson Peete, and Johnny Depp.

There’s a lot going against 21 JUMP STREET – it stars Jonah Hill (who I honestly think I’d rather see doing quirky dramas like Moneyball instead of silly comedies) and Channing Tatum (who I never remember being intentionally funny before) in a comedic update of a TV show from the ’80s. Making things tougher on the film (though none of this is JUMP STREET’s fault), I was watching it in an old, semi-crowded theater on a crappy print. (It was the 10 PM show at the $3 casino cinema.) I’d heard good things about it, but I didn’t have high expectations.

Five minutes in, I was hooked.

21 JUMP STREET is an incredibly funny movie that does a smart thing – it tells a simple story very effectively, building most of the plot elements around the triangulation of Schmidt and Jenko’s job as police officers, the high school location of the their undercover investigation, and Schmidt and Jenko’s insecurities.

Let me say that again in case you skimmed over it – 21 JUMP STREET is an incredibly funny movie, and I come away from this film as impressed with Jonah Hill as I did after Moneyball. Hill co-wrote JUMP STREET with Michael Bacall (who also co-wrote the excellent Scott Pilgrim vs. the World) and they keep their script focused and driven, making the humor serve the story instead of simply stringing together a bunch of funny bits. Hill also wisely casts himself in the straighter role, allowing Tatum to handle more of the outrageous comedy.

Hill and Tatum make an interesting duo – they have the typical cinematic tall guy and fat guy bit look down, but unlike Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, Spade and Farley, Hill and Tatum largely invert the stereotype, with the fat one being the practical one and the skinny one being the dummy. (And, yeah, I hate to use such base terms and paint with such a broad brush, but this is a pretty standard comedic configuration.) It works, too, because Hill is very good at playing a the put-upon guy who’s personal pain serves as the basis for the film’s comedic debasement of him, and Tatum is very good as the popular guy who’s used to doing the debasing.

Schmidt and Jenko (Hill and Tatum) went to high school together, but were on opposite sides of the cool line. Neither one of them got to go to the prom – Schmidt because no one would go with him and Jenko because his poor grades got him barred.

Years later, they unwittingly enroll in the police academy at the same. “Hey, Not-So-Slim Shady!” Jenko calls out, a reference to Schmidt’s Eminem-inspired look in high school. Very quickly, they realize they can help each other since Schmidt isn’t so good with the physical (being overweight) and Jenko isn’t so good with the tests (being dumb). Before we know it, they’ve both passed the Academy and been made partners.

Impressively, JUMP STREET moves through all of this set-up efficiently. The two guys are bike cops and they screw up a bust and they get kicked over into the Jump Street program, where they meet Captain Dickson (Ice Cube) at an abandoned church that serves as the program’s headquarters. Dickson sends them back to high school, but because Jenko can’t remember his cover identity, he ends up having to live as the science nerd and Schmidt gets enrolled in drama. It’s another smart twist, having these two guys live high school over, but this time from the other’s point of view.

Not only is the script smart, but the casting and acting is top notch. Ice Cube totally embraces the “angry black captain” stereotype, and Hill and Bacall’s script uses these stereotypes to its benefit, having Dickson address them directly. “Yeah, I’m black!” he shouts at them from the pulpit. “I worked hard to get where I am, and yes, sometimes I get angry!” After dressing Schmidt and Jenko down over their types, he tells them to “embrace your stereotypes!”

Which they then almost immediately screw up and have to live life as the other one.

There’s plenty of stupid humor here – the guys end up getting tricked into using drugs, they purposely throw a huge party at Schmidt’s parent’s house, the bad guy ends up getting his dick blown off, which he then tries to pick up with his mouth – but there’s also clever humor, too, like when Schmidt starts hitting on a high school girl (they make a point to tell you she’s 18), but does it anachronistically, calling her instead of texting her.

In a move the film didn’t have to make, but did, 21 JUMP STREET is set in the same continuity as the TV show – it’s just 25 years later and everything’s seen through a comedic lens. Johnny Depp, Peter DeLuise, and Holly Robinson Peete all return to reprise their roles from the TV show, and it’s a nice touch that probably 90% of the people in the theater completely missed. Maybe they knew Depp used to be in the show, but it’s not like DeLuise and Peete’s involvement got the crowd hootering and hollering in approval. Even “Jenko” is a shout-out to the original captain of the Jump Street program, who only lasted

JUMP STREET was directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the directing duo who made the excellent Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and they display a wonderful gift for balancing the comedic with the dramatic.

I saw 21 JUMP STREET Saturday night and then went to a different theater to see Men in Black 3 on Monday (review coming shortly), and it’s not even close as to which was the better movie. I laughed more times and with greater intensity in the first 15-20 minutes of JUMP STREET than I did in the entire length of MIB3. At the end of JUMP STREET, they tease a set-up for a sequel where Schmidt and Jenko go to college, and I’m honestly looking forward to seeing it.