And this, you’ll agree, is preferable to ruining The Flash.
It’s surprising that, with all the frenzied pre-strike activity of September and October, we weren’t completely bombarded with news of the next spirit-hollowing projects from the clods of the industry – i.e. our pals Adam Shankman, Marc Lawrence, Howard Deutch and so on. Or maybe we were and I just blotted them from memory. To tell you the truth, I only write about these guys for batting practice.
To that end, my swing mechanics must be seriously off ‘cuz I can’t think of a single nasty thing to say about Shawn Levy’s post-Another Buttfucking Night at the Museum (aka Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant Build Their Dream Second Houses, aka Jumanji 3) picture, Father Figure. The tender, heartwarming, pipe-laying story of "a successful bachelor who boldly offers to care for his widowed sister and her daughters in the aftermath of a family tragedy", Father Figure absolutely sounds like the kind of film Chris Columbus should be directing to shake off the moderate commercial failure of Rent. Instead, the Mark Friedman/Tom McCarthy scripted dramedy will go to Fox’s new Golden Boy of Banality, who’ll produce the film through his 21 Laps shingle (that being a reference to what Levy administers to Tom Rothman every morning).
And that’s a lot of words wasted on a movie that won’t start shooting until late ’08 at the earliest (Another Night goes first next spring). Such are the unpleasant demands of Levy-Watch.