Peter Lord, Hugh Grant

Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of bubbly. Adults and youngsters (especially parents with kids) should raise a toast of fizzy grog to Aardman Animations and its army of painstaking artists, who’ve effectively plundered Hollywood’s archive of swashbuckling tricks to create the zany-quirky spoof “The Pirates! Band of Misfits.”

As animation aficionados and guileless youngsters have come to expect from Aardman (creators of the loveably gangly Wallace & Gromit cartoons, as well as the feather-light “Chicken Run” and the lovely “Arthur Christmas”), the tedious technique of stop-motion, Claymation moviemaking has resulted in yet another wondrous work of British weirdness and idiosyncrasy.

“The Pirates!” – directed by Aardman co-founder Peter Lord and adapted from Gideon Defoe’s comic novel “The Pirates! In an Adventure With Scientists” – is indeed a treasure trove of oddness and eccentricity that imagines a scurvy band of shipmates who look forward to “Ham Night” every week with their benevolent Pirate Captain (voiced with salty wit by Hugh Grant).

In the Victorian-era world of these sea-going marauders, the captain is a bumbling buccaneer who wants nothing more than to win the coveted Pirate of the Year Award and show up his more fearsome and successful competitors, snotty Black Bellamy (Jeremy Piven), sultry Cutlass Liz (Salma Hayek) and the Elvis-like Pirate King (Brian Blessed).

The Pirate Captain has a loyal if bumbling crew, a fat parrot named Polly (who is actually the last of the near-extinct dodo birds) and a creaky but serviceable ship (with a bumper sticker that reads: “Honk if you’re seasick”). So he sets off on a high-seas quest to pilfer a hold full of booty and in the process runs afoul of devious science nerd Charles Darwin (David Tennant) and his mute, conniving monkey butler, not to mention the rabidly pirate-hating Queen Victoria (Imelda Staunton in full Cruella de Vil rant).

As usual for an Aardman production, the film is an overflowing feast of eye candy and visual gags (note especially the interior of rowdy Barnacle’s Face pirate pub, which features a full salad bar, and the wondrously daft and rococo pirate’s ship, a handcrafted miniature art piece that weighs in at 770 pounds and includes 44,569 parts). Bookish types might also spot among the pub rabble a snooty Jane Austen flinging a beer stein at the hooded Elephant Man (aka Joseph Merrick).

While the film boasts the rudimentary look of an Aardman Claymation feature (complete with silly characters and their array of shifting eyes, florid noses and toothy mouths), it’s also neatly enhanced with subtle 3D touches and dazzling flourishes of computer animation that lend uncommon texture to backgrounds and allow the seas to churn and roil and wash around the film’s model ships. This is indeed the richest and most technically ambitious of all Aardman films.

So if you think the fey Capt. Jack Sparrow and his “Pirates of the Caribbean” juggernaut has captured all the comic gold there is to find in the briny recesses of the multiplex, think again. “The Pirates! Band of Misfits” is definitely a worthy contender for Pirate of the Year honors.

- Dennis King

“The Pirates! Band of Misfits”

PG
1:28
3 stars
Starring: Voices of Hugh Grant, Salma Hayek, Jeremy Piven, Imelda Staunton
(Mild action, rude humor and some language)

BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – Picture a couple of gnarly, cutlass-wielding, Victorian-era pirates of the high seas and the last pair you’d probably envision would be urbane British actor Hugh Grant and pixyish, bespectacled animator Peter Lord.

Hugh Grant, Pirate Captain

But they are two of the primary scalawags behind Aardman Animations’ newest feature-length comedy, “The Pirates! Band of Misfits,” a stop-motion cartoon spoof of all things scurvy and swashbuckling.

During a jovial, back-and-forth press conference for the movie at the Regency Hotel hosted by Columbia Pictures, the two – Grant, the handsome, rascally leading man with his droll Brit wit, and the rumpled Aardman co-founder Lord, looking like a whimsical college don – waxed on about buccaneers, stop-motion animation, the quirks of British humor, Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin and the pleasures of voice acting.

“The Pirates! Band of Misfits” follows the seafaring misadventures of the luxuriantly bearded Pirate Captain, a bumbling but boundlessly enthusiastic brigand who leads a rag-tag crew on a quest to amass a shipload of booty and win for himself the much-coveted title among fellow thieves as Pirate of the Year.

Grant readily admits that he looks nothing like his big, buff, bearded animated character, Pirate Captain. But while he might have doubted his ability to play a pirate, he relished the challenge of giving voice to such a vivid, oddball comic character.

“When I saw the script, I panicked really,” the actor said. “I read it on the page and thought, ‘oh, that’s not very me.’ And then I looked at the character model they’d built and thought, ‘that’s really not me, at all.’ And then I realized I was going to have to do some acting. So I just started experimenting with silly voices. It sort of happened that way. But my touchstone was always the beard. I always felt if I stroked my imaginary beard I became the Pirate Captain. And so I did a lot of beard stroking.”

Lord, directing his first film since 2000’s “Chicken Run,” admitted Grant is not the first actor who comes to mind when you utter the word “pirate,” but he brought qualities to the role that were intangible.

“Hugh is the perfect person to play (Pirate Captain),” Lord said. “He’s rot at being a pirate and he’s up against some selfish and dangerous people. But the character’s essential cheerfulness is what wins through.”

For his part, Grant wryly confessed that voice acting is a pretty easy gig.

“That was the whole joy of a film like this,” Grant joked. “Things like physical comedy – I don’t really do that. But I didn’t have to. I just left it to the animators. They do the whole thing for you. In fact, they did everything for me – things I can’t do in films. Like I can’t do physical comedy, I can’t do stunts, I can’t do emotion – but they did it all.”

Did he ever want to be a pirate when he was a kid?

“I can’t say I did,” Grant said. “No, I really wanted to be in the U.S. Cavalry. And I still haven’t given up that hope entirely.”

Lord allowed that pirate movies have a long and storied history in Hollywood, but beyond a few iconic nuggets of gold he said it isn’t such a treasure trove of spoof-worthy conventions as one would think.

“At the start we looked back at old pirate movies to see what great larks they were,” the director said. “But once you’ve done the big sword fights and the swinging on ropes and the sliding down the sail with a knife, that’s kind of it then. But we tapped into a general sense of this ridiculously over-the-top jollity and good humor. The funniest one was ‘The Crimson Pirate’ that Burt Lancaster filmed, completely hilarious. They were having such a good time the whole time, bounding and leaping from place to place. So that was nice. But it’s not really such a terribly rich genre. We were just referring to some idealized folk memory of what pirate movies ought to be like, that was the idea.”

In that vein, the script by Gideon Defoe (drawn from his comic novel, “The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists”) plays fast and loose with history and has cheeky fun making villains and fools of Queen Victoria and Charles Darwin.

“That was always a big plus for me,“ Grant quipped. “I hate those two. Actually, there are people who have fixations on historical characters. Doing ‘Love Actually’ with Billy Bob Thornton, who as you know is unusual, we learned that he has a proper phobia about 19th century British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. He’s terrified of him. And I remember on that set, we had a set of No. 10 Downing Street, I found a picture of Disraeli and I used to slyly push it in front of Billy Bob. And he would just break out in a sweat.”

Which brought the conversation around to the differences between British humour and American humor.

Peter Lord

“People have asked me about that for years,” said Grant, “and honestly I don’t think there are such big differences. I guess the only place where there’s a little more emphasis in Britain is sometimes on profound silliness, just almost surreal, childish silliness like you see in Monty Python or in a lot of Aardman films, I think. But otherwise I don’t think there are profound differences.”

Lord added, “I find it impossible to answer when people ask, ‘is your humor very British?’ I have no idea. And the big question is, if it is different, does it matter really? Because we in Britain, we drink in the American humor by the gallon-load. In all sorts of different styles and tones, we take it all in and laugh at half the antics. I’m sure there are some things we don’t get. Cultural references and such. Like when people make jokes about American high school. I know there’s a whole world of experience that American high school kids have had that I haven’t had. But I don’t mind. I laugh along, I get bits of it and bits I miss and that’s fine. So I kind of hope American audiences will be similarly broad-minded and just enjoy something with a slightly different tone.”

“And it is always true that the more you try to be international with your humor or your entertainment, the more you’ll fail,” Grant said. “And the more you try to be local and indigenous and just do what pleases you the more you’re likely to succeed internationally. People like it. They like something different. They don’t like homogenized stuff.”

So, how do they hit that sweet spot with humor for kids and adults?

“It is very difficult … well, in fact it’s very easy actually,” said Lord. “I really think – I’ll say the corny thing – you just make it for yourself. Because what else can you do except what amuses you? If it doesn’t amuse you, you aren’t going to do it. So you do what amuses you.

“But we’re not idiots.,” he continued. “We know, of course, that it’s for children as well. For example, the writer, Gideon Defoe, writes hilarious dialogue but would never leave any room for action at all. So we had to force his dialogue aside and said, ‘no, no, we’ve got to get some action in here. This has to be visually entertaining, as well.’ That was my role, just to make a space for the purely visual and just trust the audience that they will like humor up and down the scale. And I think that’s what we’ve done – we’ve got some quite smart humor for the sophisticated adults and ludicrous schoolboy humor for children and everything in between, I hope. It seems to all fit together rather well.”

The creative team of actor-writer Jason Segel and director-writer Nick Stoller has made its romantic comedy reputation by gently tweaking the standard boy-meets-girl conventions of the well-worn genre and tilting them slightly askew.

Emily Blunt, Jason Segel

They did that quite winningly in “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and they do it again in the offbeat and warmly funny, though slightly scattered, “Five-Year Engagement,” which pairs the dauntless romantic Segel with the stunning Emily Blunt and gives the British actress a chance to show off some surprisingly strong comic chops.

With Stoller taking his sweet time (perhaps too much so) rolling out the story of nuptial interruptus, the movie piles on lots of oddball diversions and quirky supporting players to extend what’s essentially a pretty simple story.

It goes like this: Segel’s Tom is an up-and-coming San Francisco chef who has finally summoned up the nerve to propose to his lovely girlfriend Violet (Blunt). But before their wedding, Violet, a smart psychology grad student, is offered a prestigious position at the University of Michigan. Noble Tom agrees to forego his culinary career and follow Violet to the rustic North Country.

There, she ends up spending too much time at work, under the fervent gaze of a too-interested supervisor (funny Rhys Ifans), and Tom falls into an increasingly sour funk as their wedding plans get put off time and again.

It should be noted that the producer here is Judd Apatow, who is practically a brand name for this sort of R-rated relationship fare. (In fact, ad copy for this film boasts of its ties to the “Bridesmaids” producer, but that’s mostly a bait and switch ploy.)

“Five-Year Engagement” contains the usual Apatow touches – lots of sexual frankness and streaming vulgarity, plenty of misunderstanding and miscommunication between men and women, hapless men struggling with issues of ego and maturity. But on its meandering course to “I do,” it contains some decidedly dark and emotional touches.

As Violet is preoccupied with her research (something to do with stale doughnuts, believe it or not), Tom devolves rather ludicrously from a gifted chef into a bearded backwoods yokel with a passion for hunting, smoking venison and brewing mead.
The roster of supporting players, mostly TV mainstays, provides some engaging but largely tangential diversions. The standouts include Mindy Kaling (“The Office”) and Kevin Hart as Violet’s chatty U of M colleagues; Alison Brie (“Community”) as Violet’s sister and Chris Pratt (“Parks and Recreation”) as Tom’s randy, idiot pal; Brian Posehn as Tom’s deranged co-worker at a hippie sandwich shop, and Chris Parnell (“Saturday Night Live”) as the sweater-knitting “faculty spouse” who gives Tom a chilling look at what his future might hold.

Stoller does an admirable job of juggling this big cast of extras and dodging in and out of various subplots. But with Segel and Blunt holding center stage and sparking up loads of endearing romantic chemistry, “Five-Year Engagement” largely keeps its eye on the prized couple and keeps us cheering on its long and winding way to the altar.

- Dennis King

“Five-Year Engagement”

R
2:04
3 stars
Starring: Jason Segel, Emily Blunt, Alison Brie, Rhys Ifans, Chris Parnell
(Sexual content and language throughout)

Peter Lord

NEW YORK – In what business does a great week of work amount to six seconds of product?

In the rarefied world of stop-motion animation, where puppet figures are moved in tiny increments between individually photographed frames to create the illusion of movement, six seconds of animated footage is widely considered a solid week’s labor. And that’s why an 88-minute animated feature such as Aardman’s “The Pirates! Band of Misfits” can take more than five years to complete.

Aardman Animations, the revered British house that has given us such beloved Claymation figures as Wallace & Gromit and garnered four Academy Awards, has pioneered many of the painstaking, second-by-second techniques of manipulating miniature models into fluid animated films.

It’s co-founder and co-owner Peter Lord (who started the company in 1972 with partner David Sproxton) talked about the rigors of stop motion – or stop-frame – work during a press conference for the release of “The Pirates!”

And the hallmark word of such precise, demanding, snail-paced animation seems to be “patience.”

“It doesn’t seem like patience, particularly,” said Lord. “All of the animators that do their one or two seconds a day, they don’t seem overly patient. That’s because they’re trying to do something. Every day they’re trying to achieve something, and that keeps their energy level high. Because every day, slowly, they’re trying to get somewhere and achieve something, and that’s exciting.”

“Pirates” star Hugh Grant, also on hand for the press day, chuckled and asked director Lord about a persistent rumor attached to the grueling production.

“Is it true the story of the one man doing 10 seconds of the tavern scene who got married, had children, got divorced while he was just making that 10 seconds?”

A raucous and intricate scene in a Barnacle’s Face pirates pub – the longest in the film – in which several pirate characters were first introduced, took 18 months to shoot.

“It’s not quite that,” Lord explained with a laugh, “but he did start in the tavern at the beginning of the shoot and sort of emerged at the end, now married and with a child which he didn’t have when he went in there. He spent 18 months in the tavern. Sounds like heaven. And that wasn’t the whole scene. It was like half the scene. Other people shot the other half.”

“You told me that one good animator had done a great week’s work if he’s done four seconds,” Grant said.

“Six seconds,” Lord corrected. “And happy with that.”

- Dennis King

The "New" Stooges

Since Moe, Larry and Curly made their bones in their 1930s and ’40s heyday with some 200 comedy short subjects for Columbia Pictures, a short review of the Farrelly Brothers’ chaotic but affectionate “The Three Stooges” seems fitting.

So here are some highlights and lowlights from the movie that, depending on your point of view, is either a sweet homage to those Poobahs of the Eye Poke or a clumsy recycling of their archaic comic anarchy or a juvenile mimicry of crude their cultural imprint.

Lords of Lowbrow: Brothers Peter and Bobby Farrelly (“Dumb and Dumber” and “There’s Something About Mary”) have cut their moviemaking careers from a common cloth with the original Stooges, larding most of their movies with rough slapstick and roaring political incorrectness, plus ample doses of bathroom humor and sappy sentimentalism. So this seems a perfect pairing of filmmakers and subject matter.

Dunderheaded Doppelgangers: Although the Farrellys flirted with big stars for the leads (Russell Crowe, Benicio Del Toro, Sean Penn, Jim Carrey and Paul Giamatti were rumored), the three relative unknowns they settled on are very good. Chris Diamantopoulos, with his bowl haircut is a fine scowling Moe (“whatsthatmattawithyou”), Sean Hayes, topped with Larry’s balding frizzcut, lends some surprising depth to the most underrated Stooge, and bald-pated Will Sasso captures the fluttery mannerisms and frantic facial contortions of manchild Curly (“woo-woo-woo”) with both affection and precision.

Keeping It Short: Although the original Stooges always aspired to make feature films, Columbia honcho Harry Cohn kept them in the “short subjects” ghetto, perhaps realizing that their brand of idiocy is best served in small doses. The boys late-career feature efforts (without the late Curly) are simply dreadful.

The new “Three Stooges,” told in three chapters, is needlessly complicated and meanders off into a ludicrous murder plot featuring bombshell-of-the-moment Sofia Vergara. Aside from a pretty hilarious bit featuring the kooky cast of “Jersey Shore,” the story flies in the face of the Stooges’ simple – and simpleton – style of storytelling.

Slap-slap-slapstick: With a plethora of eye gouges, nose tweaks, forehead slaps, noggin boinks and hammer fists– with appropriate sound effects – the new film manages to capture all of the Stooges’ classic abuse gags. Interesting, though, in this correct age of Parental Guidance that the Farrellys felt compelled to include a funny little postscript – warning kids in the audience not to try this stuff at home. Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk!

- Dennis King

“The Three Stooges”

PG
1:32
2 stars
Starring: Sean Hayes, Will Sasso, Chris Diamantopoulos, Sofia Vergara
(Slapstick violence, rude and suggestive humor, including language)

Jason Biggs

The “American Pie” series developed a cult following by serving up steamy, seamy helpings of juvenile angst, adult insecurity, sexual humiliation and outrageous potty gags, always leavened with forgiving dollops of sweet sentimentality on top.

But “American Reunion,” the fourth slice in the unabashedly cringe-inducing franchise – after “American Pie 1 and 2” and “American Wedding” (plus four tepid direct-to-video spinoffs) – tips the scales perilously toward gross comic gluttony. Unfortunately, the ingredients of this “Pie” are mostly stale.

Sticking to the series’ pattern of following a core group of nerdy pals from East Great Falls High School – Jim (Jason Biggs), Oz (Chris Klein), Finch (Eddie Kaye Thomas) and Kevin (Thomas Ian Nicholas)– as they make a prom-night pact to lose their virginity, as they party-hearty at a summer resort and as the sexually awkward, pie-loving Jim finally weds “band geek” Michelle (Alyson Hannigan), “American Reunion” is just what the name implies.

It’s time for the gang’s high school reunion, and the friends, family and significant others return to their picturesque Michigan burg lugging along groaning loads of adult baggage.

Jim and Michelle are now parents of a rambunctious, thumb-sucking boy and the magic – read that: sex – seems to have gone out of their marriage (not to mention the fact that Jim still has a thing for internet porn and tube socks). Oz has a cool job as host of an L.A. sports talk show and a buxom bimbo girlfriend (“30 Rock’s” Katrina Bowden), but he still carries a torch for down-to-earth Heather (Mena Suvari). Kevin, sporting a weaselly beard, is a whipped, soap-opera-loving househusband with a successful working wife and a lingering longing for boring classmate Vicky (Tara Reid). And Finch arrives on a sleek motorcycle, a mysterious world traveler whose pompous tales of adventure mask some really mundane secrets.

And then, of course, there’s the snarky, rabidly obnoxious Steve Stifler (Seann William Scott), the “Stifmeister,” now stuck in a dead-end office job but still prone to those rude, crude, troublemaking antics that dominate most films in the series.

Various lesser classmates show up briefly (for instance, Natasha Lyonne’s Jessica to set up a quick lesbian joke). Jim’s sweet-natured, now widowed dad (the always game Eugene Levy) turns up in all his nattering glory, and he’s coaxed into a naughty flirtation with Stifler’s buxom mom (Jennifer Coolidge).

Biggs’ nice-guy Jim is the steady center of the wildly episodic story that tries to tie up a lot of loose strands. But Scott’s gleefully misanthropic Stifler is the swizzle stick that stirs this stringently R-rated comic cocktail. Levy, as always, provides the sweet soul that takes a little of the edge off the over-the-top raunch.

Co-directors and writers Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg (co-creators of the “Harold and Kumar” movies) are right in their comfort zone juggling this sort chaotic, episodic mishmash of a story that delivers sexually charged slapstick and raw bathroom humor with just enough heart-felt sentiment to make it palatable.

And that’s probably the secret that makes the “American Pie” films – and “American Reunion” – such sure hits with fans. They may be terribly gross and outrageously raunchy, but they’re never really mean.

- Dennis King

“American Reunion”

R
1:53
2 stars
Starring: Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan, Chris Klein, Seann William Scott
(Crude and sexual humor throughout, nudity, language, brief drug use and teen drinking)

Stephen King once said of novelist Donald E. Westlake that on sunny days he wrote comic crime novels under his real name about a hapless crook named Dortmunder, and on dark and rainy days he wrote serious pulp fiction under the pen name of Richard Stark about a hardboiled heister named Parker. At one point in his career, Westlake commanded more money as Stark than he did under his real name, and Parker was one of the most popular characters in the crime genre.

No less than six movies (not to mention a new series of graphic novels) have been based on the Parker books, beginning in 1967 with director John Boorman’s brilliantly stylized thriller “Point Blank,” based the first book in the series, “The Hunter,” and starring Lee Marvin as the relentless and remorseless anti-hero (with his name changed to Walker). The same book was adapted for the screen again in 1999 with less artistic success as “Payback,” starring Mel Gibson in the re-named character of Porter.

 Director John Flynn’s “The Outfit” (1973), starring Robert Duvall as Parker (changed to Macklin) is an obscure gem worth seeking out, as is French director Jean-Luc Godard’s “Made in U.S.A.” (1966), which is a very loose (and unauthorized) adaptation of “The Jugger.” A little-seen 1983 Canadian film treatment of “Slayground,” starring Peter Coyote as Parker (changed to Stone), is incoherent and unwatchable.

Which brings us to 1968′s “The Split” (now manufactured on demand by Warner Archives at wbshop.com) starring Jim Brown as Parker (renamed McLaine). It’s based on “The Seventh,” about the robbery of a professional football stadium’s box office receipts in the midst of a big game. Somehow, screenwriter Robert Sabaroff and director Gordon Flemyng managed to drain the story of all the noir atmospherics and suspenseful unpredictability that were hallmarks of the Parker books. The sunny L.A. locations look bleached out and storyline is as routine and clichéd as a ’60s made-for-TV movie. But it’s interesting to watch the stellar cast that includes Julie Harris, Gene Hackman, Ernest Borgnine, Jack Klugman, Warren Oates, James Whitmore and Donald Sutherland, all at their sinister best in spite of the mediocre script and direction.

 The period fashions and funky Quincy Jones soundtrack are a lot of fun, too. And “The Split” has the distinction of being the first movie to earn an “R” rating under the then-new MPAA system, but the violence that branded it is pretty tame by today’s standards, and especially Stark standards.

— Gene Triplett

BY DENNIS KING

NEW YORK – Liam Neeson is no stranger to portraying mythical characters on screen.

Liam Neeson

The Irish-born actor with the craggy countenance, husky Celtic brogue and raspy, baritone voice is familiar to many moviegoers as the Jedi knight Qui-Gon Jinn in “Star Wars Episode I – The Phantom Menace” and as the wizened voice of Aslan the lion in the “Chronicles of Narnia” film trilogy. Among other larger-than-life characters he’s essayed on screen – Oskar Schindler in “Schindler’s List,” the title characters in “Ethan Frome,” “Michael Collins” and “Rob Roy,” the fugitive Jean Valjean in “Les Miserables” and the gritty survivor Ottway in “The Gray.”

But Neeson admits with a wry smile that few characters in his burgeoning resume can top the role of Zeus, the so-called “Father of Gods and men” from Greek mythology who ruled Mount Olympus and leads a heady ensemble cast in “Wrath of the Titans,” the macho, special-effects-laden follow-up to 2010’s “Clash of the Titans.”

Neeson, who said he learned most of his Greek mythology from watching old Western movies, leads a cast that includes fellow god-like actors Ralph Fiennes as Hades, Danny Huston as Poseidon and rugged Sam Worthington as Zeus’ son and half-god Perseus, heroic conqueror of the monstrous Kraken in “Clash.”

“Wrath of the Titans” picks up a decade after the first film, when Perseus is trying to settle into a human-scaled life as a fisherman and raise his young son in peace. But there’s trouble on Olympus as the gods’ power is weakened and the imprisoned Titans, led by the ferocious Kronos (father of Zeus, Hades and Poseidon), are threatening to overthrow the gods and unleash chaos on the world. Zeus soon appears to enlist his reluctant son Perseus to come to the aid of the struggling gods.

During press interviews at the Ritz Carlton Hotel hosted by Warner Bros., Neeson, absent the long locks and flowing beard of his character, talked about his attraction to the “Titans” films and the place of mythology in movies.

“Besides the usual action and excitement, these stories (from Greek mythology) tap in to every culture in the world,” Neeson said. “And they’re essentially the same story, which is an innocent has to go through a trial or ordeal to save the society, comes out the other end and I think learns something that advances his society onward.

“Hmm,” he mused. “I must write that down.”

Neeson said he first clued in to the larger pattern of epic heroism in action movies by watching American Westerns as a kid.
“Westerns are Greek mythology,” he said. “It’s all the same story, you know. Certainly for me it was Westerns, and eventually in my 20s I started reading Greek mythology. And in preparation for ‘The Phantom Menace.’ You had to, because ‘Star Wars’ is all about Greek mythology stories.”

Also akin to “Star Wars,” the “Titans” movies required Neeson and his fellow actors to work a lot in front of green screens, delivering their lines alone to cue points on the set where digital effects would later be added.

“I’m from the old school, from the first ‘Star Wars,’ where we used colored tennis balls as focal cues,” Neeson said of green-screen acting. “And I kind of liked my tennis balls. I got used to them. On this film we had lots of little colored bits of tape. And you had to act sometimes with bits of tape, but that’s OK.”

Much more fun, Neeson said, was acting opposite Ralph Fiennes, who was the villain of the piece as Hades, Zeus’ devious brother and chief rival.

“Ralph is one of my dearest, oldest friends. So it was terrific,” said Neeson. “When we did the first one, ‘Clash of the Titans,’ we found it hard to act with each other, so I would look at his forehead and he would look at my forehead, because sometimes when we made eye contact it got quite silly. But we were more restrained this time, and we had a lot more deeper, darker issues to act. So we didn’t laugh as much.”

Still, Neeson said with a chuckle, there was one giant climactic scene in the film when Zeus and Hades join forces in a final showdown, which required the two grand actors to pretend to deflect CGI thunderbolts and hurl them back at their enemies in an awkward green-screen dance.

“We both felt like pillocks (British slang for “fools”),” Neeson said with a rueful shake of his head. “Because, we were on a real set in Wales, with hundreds and hundreds of extras and stuff, and we’re (gesturing wildly and throwing thunder bolts with our hands). And I’m looking and him to see what he’s doing, and he’s looking at me to see what I’m doing. It all felt a little bit silly. But in scenes like that, you just have to go for it.” Then, under he breath, he added with a wink “That was what they paid me millions for.”

What is it about ripe, stinky Hollywood cheese that makes so many grand, respected actors willing to cast off all ego and make zestful fools of themselves?

Sam Worthington

Every actor worth his salt has made them – big, overblown, blockbusters glutted with spectacular set pieces, half-baked stories and incessantly intrusive special effects. So perhaps we might understand the big-paycheck lure to Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Danny Huston and “Avatar” hero Sam Worthington that was proffered by the incoherent mess of “Wrath of the Titans,” the bigger, louder, bolder follow-up to the 2010 cheesefest, “Clash of the Titans.”

(Perhaps the childlike taglines for these two groaning curiosities give some clue as to their simplistic ambitions: “Titans Will Clash” and “Feel the Wrath” Duh.)

In addition to the huge star power that went into the making of this de facto sequel (along with the Big Three top liners, there’s a sly turn by the ever wily Bill Nighy, an appealingly earthy contribution from Toby “War Horse” Kebbell and a brisk, feminist touch from pretty, buff Rosamund Pike), there are enough computer-generated effects to overload an entire trilogy and a 3D aspect that’s mildly entertaining (rocks hurtling toward your face) but offers nothing original.

The story spins several classic and made-up aspects of Greek mythology and turns the thing into a standard-issue sword-and-sandal epic – complete with rugged hero (Worthington’s brusque Kraken-killer Perseus), fading Greek gods (Neeson’s sage Zeus, Fiennes’ hideous Hades and Huston’s water-logged Poseidon) and a slew of swirling, snarling, pirouetting, slithering, thudding CGI monsters (multi-headed Chimeras, lumbering Cyclops, bullish Minotaurs, and legions of fierce, duel-torso Makhi warriors).

Trouble is, the CGI effects are so jittery and busy that they overwhelm the actors (even titans like Neeson and Fiennes; even a brash mug like Worthington). The action moves swiftly but not very cogently through some pretty intricate and interesting sets (note especially the interlocking, puzzle-like Underworld labyrinth). And the computer monsters are filmed with such glancing, breathless speed that we never have a chance to see them clearly and register how horrid and appalling they’re supposed to be.

It’s a puzzle and a shame, really. A puzzle because “Clash of the Titans” was so roundly booed by critics (although blindly embraced by international audiences) that you’d think a sequel would be a dubious project. A shame because there are some positive things going on here – a fresh breathe of humor from Nighy as the demented inventor Hephaestus and from Kebbell as Poseidon’s ne’er-do-well son Agenor, a snarling villain turn by Edgar Ramirez as Zeus’s evil son Ares, and some pretty impressive sets and costumes.

But “Wrath of the Titans” never reconciles its campy impulses with its bully-boy briskness or its self-serious haminess. While it might have been ham and cheese on wry, instead it’s just an overstuffed hoagie that’s merely hokey.

- Dennis King

“Wrath of the Titans”

PG-13
1:39
1 ½ stars
Starring: Sam Worthington, Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes, Toby Kebbell, Rosamund Pike
(Sequences of fantasy violence and action)

Talk about a movie swimming against the current, “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” is part political satire, part romantic comedy and part whimsical fable tagged with an eccentric title that won’t likely entice the popcorn crowd to take its lure.

Emily Blunt, Ewan McGregor

It’s a tough sell, for sure, but with director Lasse Hallstrom (“The Cider House Rules,” “Chocolat”) lending his soft-focused, humanist touch and with a hugely appealing cast of Ewan McGregor and Emily Blunt providing chaste romantic fuel and Kristin Scott Thomas contributing sharp comic strokes, the movie might prove a surprise crowd-pleaser if enough moviegoers rise to its quirkiness.

Although the screenplay by Simon Beaufoy (“Slumdog Millionaire,” “The Full Monty”) is a canny condensation of an ambitious story, it largely neuters its source material, the tart satirical novel by Paul Torday that mercilessly skewers British bureaucracy, Middle Eastern foreign policy and man’s prideful determination to engineer nature.

The epistolary novel – told in a series of memos, emails, bureaucratic transcripts and diary entries – focuses on a colorful quartet of players: the fabulously wealthy Sheikh Muhammed, who entertains a fanciful dream of introducing salmon fishing into the Wadi Allyn, a seasonal river of his arid Yemini homeland; prim, efficient Harriet Chetwode-Talbot, the sheikh’s pretty business agent in Britain; the uptight Dr. Alfred Jones, England’s leading fisheries expert who is pressed into consulting on what he sees as the sheikh’s half-baked folly, and the profane Patricia Maxwell, the British prime minister’s bullying press officer.

As the unlikely project to bring cold-water Atlantic salmon to a manufactured habitat in the Arabian desert unfolds, the main focus is on the initially prickly, then warmly affectionate relationship that grows between Ms. Chetwode-Talbot (Blunt) and Dr. Jones (McGregor). Both harbor messy complications in their lives – she is involved with a hunky military officer (Tom Mison) who’s been declared MIA in Afghanistan, and he’s locked in a loveless marriage to a brisk banking exec (Rachael Stirling) who is more passionate about her job than about her husband.

For his part, the visionary sheikh (Amr Waked) sees his whimsical project as a way to bring his countrymen together in sport and give them a budding cottage industry to foster. And for her part, the cynical Maxwell (Scott Thomas in a gender switch from the novel) is only interested in landing a feel-good story in the press to distract the public from the bad news out of Afghanistan.

Hallstrom, ever the shrewd alchemist at mixing myth and reality, folds in just enough fishing lore (and realistic casting technique) to make the science and angling seem authentic but not boring. And McGregor, with his tweeds and halting Scottish brogue, seems the perfect, halting foil for the doe-eyed and vulnerable Blunt.

It’s all very sweet and charming, if a bit pat and manipulative. For a shocking, tougher and more bracing climax, consult the novel. But on screen, “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” opts for a feathery, fairy-tale ending.

As the sheikh intones in one of his philosophical moods, “For a fisherman, the only virtues are patience, tolerance and humility.” In this case, those are pretty good virtues for a moviegoer, as well.

- Dennis King

“Salmon Fishing in the Yemen”

PG-13
1:52
2 ½ stars
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Emily Blunt, Amr Waked, Kristin Scott Thomas
(Some violence, sexual content and language)