‘Honeyglue’ a by-the-books indie – ‘Ghostbusters’ courts male moviegoers

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LOS ANGELES, June 5, (Agencies): For a film about throwing caution to the wind and bucking conventions, “Honeyglue” diligently adheres to cliches, many of them borrowed wholesale from 2002’s Nicholas Sparks adaptation “A Walk to Remember.” Writer-director James Bird’s sophomore feature (following “Eat Spirit Eat”) is a tale of fatally ill girl meets cross-dressing boy that treats progressive ideals and death as equally manipulative dramatic devices. Save for those capable of blinding themselves to its creaky contrivances, audiences will likely have little tolerance for this gravely by-the-books indie.

Morgan (Adriana Mather) is dying of an incurable brain tumor, which has left her father Dennis (Christopher Heyerdahl), mother Janet (Jessica Tuck) and brother Bailey (Booboo Stewart) — who’s of Asian descent, and thus emblematic of the clan’s multicultural mindset — in suspended misery. No matter her dire circumstances, however, Morgan is rejuvenated when, at a nightclub, she meets Jordan (Zach Villa) and immediately falls for him.

The next morning, Jordan (who lives in a colorful canopied bed on an apartment building rooftop) appears on her doorstep in a kilt, and promptly discovers that Morgan shares with him not only a birthday, but also a quirky gender-bending spirit — which in her case, entails dressing up like “The Pink Panther” Inspector Clouseau. Invited to stay for dinner, Jordan is quickly, and rudely, assaulted with closed-minded questions from Dennis. It’s at this early stage that “Honeyglue” devolves into didacticism, resembling Kevin Smith’s 1997 “Chasing Amy” in its desire to educate audiences about, and preach acceptance of, its character’s alternative lifestyle in the most prosaic, schoolmarmish way possible.

Infests

Leaden exposition infests Bird’s screenplay, which further underlines Jordan and Morgan’s girl-boy/boy-girl natures by having characters remark upon the protagonists’ fondness for (or disinterest in) playing with dolls as kids. The film’s ham-fisted storytelling, however, is truly epitomized by recurring narrated readings from an illustrated fairy tale written and drawn by Jordan (who dropped out of art school because he couldn’t “play by their rules”) that concerns the cross-species love affair between a dragonfly boy (i.e. Morgan) and a princess queen (Jordan).

Those twee interludes serve as unnecessary reiterations of the material’s be-who-you-want-to-be ethos, which is noble in the abstract but rendered with clunky, preachy earnestness. The film’s cutie-pie identity role-reversals are so incessant — peaking with Morgan and Jordan getting hitched in matching vintage wedding dresses — as to be mind-numbing. By the time the couple sport identical shaved heads and tattoos (the latter idea taken directly from Sparks’ predecessor), the film has become a one-note sermon, stating the same thing over and over again in only superficially altered form.

It doesn’t help that Mather’s performance, which goes from tentatively cheery to speech-slurring despondent, is stilted and unconvincing, nor that Villa’s co-headlining turn exudes an off-putting degree of smirky smugness. Like their supporting cast, they’re wooden in roles that have been written in a single dimension. All the while, Bird follows a musty indie playbook, from romantic candlelit baths set to soft crooning music, to overnight slumber parties on the beach, to jokey convenience-store robberies, to Morgan’s habit of recording everything — including an incoherent doctor-kidnapping bit that frames the narrative — with her 16mm camera.

Normal

Amanda Plummer eventually appears as Jordan’s blinkered trailer-park mom, who slanders her son for not being manly or normal enough, and she helps complete the film’s transformation into a borderline-parodic combination of dying-girl romantic comedy and liberal-minded message melodrama. Throughout, Bird’s visuals are consistently flat, and his habit of cinematographically spinning around his characters (at a dinner table, on a dance floor, in a field) is dizzying in an unpleasant, nausea-inducing way — thus creating a fitting marriage of form and content.

To sell “Ghostbusters” who are you going to call? In the film’s initial nationwide TV spots, not its female stars.

Sony Pictures trotted out commercials that promoted the female-led reboot not with cast members Melissa McCarthy or Kristen Wiig, but basketball stars Kobe Bryant and Carmelo Anthony. The ads ran on ABC during game one of the NBA Finals, which is watched by a largely male audience.

Targeting different demographics through varied marketing strategies is commonplace for Hollywood films. Rarer are ads that replace a movie’s actual cast wholesale.

The ads, which drew mixed reactions from viewers exhibited the anxiety Sony may have in getting enough male moviegoers to buy tickets for the big-budget comedy. A lot is riding on the film, due out July 15, which cost more than $150 million to make.

Since its inception, Paul Feig’s “Ghostbusters” — which also stars Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones — has proven unexpectedly divisive online. Some have objected to the 1984 original being remade at all, while others have voiced criticisms of the female-led cast that have been called sexist. Much attention has centered on the high number of “dislikes” the film’s trailer received on YouTube.

The spots Thursday featured one New York Knicks-centric ad with Anthony, Spike Lee, Kristaps Porzingis and Clyde Frazier strapping on proton packs. In the other, the newly retired Bryant wages war in a “Ghostbusters” jumpsuit. The East Coast-West Coast ads were made jointly by Sony Pictures and ESPN.

The promotional push for “Ghostbusters” is going into hyperdrive. Sony also announced that Wednesday will be “Ghostbusters Day.”

At least then the “Ghostbusters” cast will get part of the marketing spotlight. Jimmy Kimmel will host the stars, along with appearances of original cast members Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson and Annie Potts on Wednesday.

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