Like the inventors of the vibrator it depicts, “Hysteria” really aims to please. And like an inattentive lover displaced by the sexual aid, the film never quite satisfies.
True to the title, there are a few hysterically funny moments as a couple of Victorian-era British doctors and an amateur inventor stumble into the creation of a mechanical device to pleasure women. Yet despite the novel premise, “Hysteria” feels as though it’s going through the motions as the filmmakers strain to deliver one of those blithe little costume charmers that can rouse art-house audiences to ecstasy.
The fictionalized story built around Dr. Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy), who patented an electric massager around 1880, is choked with clichés playing the era’s prim and proper morality against progressive, freethinking ideals that would take hold in the coming decades.
Director Tanya Wexler and screenwriters Stephen and Jonah Lisa Dyer are so determined to hammer modern social values onto their 19th century story that they create a movie of cardboard extremities. That leaves Dancy and co-stars Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jonathan Pryce and Felicity Jones either standing stiffly upright in drawing-room restraint or quaking and spouting on a soapbox, with little room in the middle for them to behave like real people.
Dancy’s Mortimer is a modern man of science, continually losing jobs as he preaches such concepts as hand-washing to kill germs to bosses who still think leeches and a good blood-letting are all it takes to cure patients.
Then he lands a cushy position as assistant to Dr. Robert Dalrymple (Price), who specializes in manipulating a woman’s uterus to produce “paroxysms” — the release of nervous tension to treat a catch-all disorder known as hysteria that includes such symptoms as depression, anxiety, contentiousness and just about anything else deemed unbecoming in females.
Mortimer is immediately attracted to Dalrymple’s demure and prudish daughter Emily (Jones) and shocked at the behavior of his other daughter, Charlotte (Gyllenhaal), a suffragette who campaigns for women’s rights and runs a center to help feed and educate the poor.
Charlotte’s ahead of her time, Emily’s rooted in hers, and Mortimer’s stuck in between. Guess which sister his 21st century puppetmasters will steer him toward.
The utter predictability of “Hysteria” is punched up only by its amusing story line as Mortimer learns that it’s hard work massaging women’s privates all day. His career threatened because of chronic hand cramps, Mortimer and wealthy pal Edmund St. John Smythe (Rupert Everett), who dabbles in new gadgets, turn an electric feather duster into an early prototype of the vibrator.
The tests they and Dalrymple conduct are hilarious, a few minutes of laughs that are almost worth the price of a ticket by themselves.
The rest of “Hysteria” is a snoozer by comparison, the characters flat, their relationships ordinary. Dancy, Jones and Pryce are dull, while Gyllenhaal plays the spitfire with far too much spit, thumping the other characters and the audience over the head with her do-gooder crusading.
They’re just not a believable bunch. That leaves a nice opening for perpetual scene-stealer Everett to dominate his few moments of screen time with wry wit and solid laughs. He’s no more believable than the rest, but at least he’s consistently entertaining.
Director Wexler, who previously made the low-budget films “Finding North” and “Ball in the House,” re-creates the costumes and trappings of the era nicely, but she stuffs the corsets and carriages with either Victorian stick figures or thoroughly modern people out of step with the story.
There’s no Big O to this origin story of the vibrator. Just little oohs and aahs here and there that add up to some tickling, fleeting moments of pleasure.
“Hysteria,” a Sony Pictures Classics release, is rated R for sexual content. Running time: 95 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.
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Motion Picture Association of America rating definitions:
G — General audiences. All ages admitted.
PG — Parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.
PG-13 — Special parental guidance strongly suggested for children under 13. Some material may be inappropriate for young children.
R — Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.
NC-17 — No one under 17 admitted.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — “The Avengers” has extended its box-office superpowers with a record $207.4 million opening weekend domestically, an even bigger start than originally projected.
Final figures from distributor Disney on Monday put the film’s debut $7.1 million higher than the studio had estimated a day earlier.
With a superstar cast, great reviews and glowing word of mouth from fans, “The Avengers” bounded past the previous record of $169.2 million set by last year’s “Harry Potter” finale.
The Marvel Comics adaptation also has taken in $447.4 million overseas since it started rolling out in international markets a week earlier. That brings its worldwide total to $654.8 million in just 12 days.
The film drew in comic-book fans and general audiences alike, with the audience evenly split between those over and under 25, according to Disney. Teens packed theaters, couples came to see it as a date movie, and parents with children made it a family outing.
“Fans, non-fans, parents, non-parents. Any kind of descriptor you can come up with, people are embracing this film,” said Dave Hollis, Disney’s head of distribution.
Over the same first weekend of May 10 years earlier, “Spider-Man” rocked Hollywood with a $114.8 million debut, the first movie ever to open with more than $100 million in a single weekend.
“It was unthinkable. People thought, ‘Wow, a blockbuster film should do $100 million in its whole run, not just opening weekend,’” said Paul Dergarabedian, analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com. “The $200 million opening weekend is something I didn’t think I would ever see, or something I wouldn’t see until after I retired.”
But since summer 2002, other blockbusters have nudged opening-weekend records higher and higher: 2006′s “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” with $135.6 million; 2007′s “Spider-Man 3″ with $151.1 million; 2008′s “The Dark Knight” with $158.4 million; and finally, last summer’s “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.”
“The Avengers” leaped beyond the “Potter” finale with a long, shrewd buildup by Marvel Studios, which had tucked teasers for its eventual superhero ensemble tale into solo films such as “Iron Man,” ”Thor” and “Captain America” for years.
Directed by Joss Whedon, who has been reading “The Avengers” comics since he was a boy, the film features Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Chris Evans as Captain America and Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye.
The sum of all of those superheroes proved more than the parts. “The Avengers” already has surpassed the worldwide box-office totals for “Iron Man,” ”Iron Man 2,” ”Thor” and “Captain America” in their entire runs.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Don’t let Mark Ruffalo’s serene demeanor fool you. He admits there’s a bit of an Incredible Hulk temper lurking underneath.
Ruffalo, who comes off as a guy that could give Clark Kent a serious challenge in the mild-mannered department, plays brilliant scientist Bruce Banner — and his big, green, mad-as-hell alter-ego, the Hulk — in the superhero tale “The Avengers,” opening Friday.
The actor said there was a time when he had anger issues.
“When I was a young actor, if you came to my apartment, you would have seen pictures and photos hung in the most bizarre places, where they were covering holes in the wall from auditions that I didn’t get or slights that I felt I had suffered, where things were thrown, cups were thrown at the walls,” Ruffalo said. “I’m no stranger to that kind of anger and rage.
“But over time, I’ve, like a rock that’s spent many times being tumbled around in the sea, I’ve sort of gotten the edges polished off of me. I’m not fighting the same fights that I was back then, the same demons.”
An Academy Awards nominee for 2010′s “The Kids Are All Right,” the 44-year-old Ruffalo has, in characteristically unassuming manner, built an impressive list of credits in independent and studio films, including “You Can Count on Me,” ”Shutter Island,” ”Zodiac,” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”
He never saw himself as superhero material, let alone the Hulk, considering the Marvel Comics character had been played by Eric Bana then Edward Norton in two big-screen misfires over the last decade that failed to please fans.
The nice thing with “The Avengers” is the Hulk doesn’t have to carry the film. Banner’s a reluctant recruit to the superhero dream team. That allowed writer-director Joss Whedon to hold Banner back, pick up the man’s trail after he had found some sense of shaky equanimity through which he keeps the “other guy,” the Hulk, from breaking forth.
It lends more emotional power to the Hulk when he’s eventually unleashed. And through motion-capture technology in which Ruffalo’s body language and performance is digitally captured as the undercarriage for the Hulk, topped off by computer animation, the green giant looks more genuine and moves more credibly among real people than he did in the earlier movies.
The Hulk’s face even resembles Ruffalo’s — tinted green and strained and bloated in colossal rage.
“It’s creepy, I have to say,” Ruffalo said as he looked through a photo album with stills of him transformed into the Hulk. “It’s exactly what we wanted it to be like. Even my chest hair, the gray in my hair. Wow. It’s pretty amazing, but it’s a little shocking.”
With the foundation Ruffalo has built in “The Avengers,” Whedon said he would love to see him in a solo Hulk movie.
Hollywood might be reluctant to go there again, but Ruffalo said he would be game, and plenty of fans seem to like the idea.
“I haven’t heard any talk about it from the producing side of the table, but people have been tweeting it. There’s been a campaign growing. I would be into doing it, I would think, if we could come up with the right story line,” Ruffalo said. “And if they want to see a 50-year-old Hulk. That might be the big thing. No one might want to see me doing this again.”
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Online:
http://marvel.com/avengers_movie
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Everyone’s buzzing about the all-star team of do-gooders in “The Avengers,” from Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man to Chris Evans’ Captain America to Chris Hemsworth’s god of thunder, Thor.
Well how about this wily bad guy who’s such a peril that humanity has to assemble half a dozen Marvel Comics superheroes to rein him in?
British actor Tom Hiddleston first played Loki, wicked younger son of Norse king of the gods Odin, in last summer’s “Thor,” scheming to banish brother Thor and take his place as heir to the throne. Hiddleston’s Loki proved so diabolical that he’s back as the villain of “The Avengers,” which opens in U.S. theaters on Friday and is already playing in some overseas markets.
As Hiddleston says, Loki is mean and hateful, which can be great fun — and greatly challenging — for an actor to play.
“Sometimes, it’s really hard, especially when you get up in the morning feeling in a good mood, and that sort of innate contentment is of absolutely no use to you, because you’re having to stoke the bonfires of anger and sadness and despair and all that stuff,” Hiddleston said.
The 31-year-old classically trained actor, who studied at London’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, clearly managed to overcome his good moods to imbue Loki with venom. Not only was he cast in “The Avengers,” but Hiddleston’s also returning for “Thor 2,” which begins shooting late this year for release in November 2013.
“He sort of steals the movie,” Hemsworth said of Hiddleston’s performance in “The Avengers.” ”He’s the catalyst for everything that’s happening. What he’s doing, that’s where it either stands or falls, and he really pulled it off.”
A rising star of British theater and TV drama, Hiddleston followed “Thor” with a charming turn as F. Scott Fitzgerald in Woody Allen’s “Midnight in Paris,” then played a noble English cavalry officer in Steven Spielberg’s “War Horse.”
Hiddleston co-stars with Rachel Weisz in Terence Davies’ infidelity drama “The Deep Blue Sea,” now playing in U.S. theaters. He also just finished production on British TV adaptations of Shakespeare’s “Henry IV” parts one and two, playing Prince Hal, and “Henry V,” in which he has the title role.
Despite his comic-book roots, Loki himself has a Shakespearean dimension akin to such villains as Iago in “Othello” and Edmund in “King Lear,” Hiddleston said.
“He’s motivated by the same things. He’s motivated by jealousy and pride and ambition and vanity,” Hiddleston said. “Shakespeare’s very unforgiving of those things, and in a way, it’s the same job. It’s just, I’m wearing a crazier costume and blowing up Manhattan.”
Hiddleston has older and younger sisters but no brothers. Yet he still recognizes the Thor-Loki rivalry as a universal struggle.
“I’ve never had a brother, but I really understand it, because I had friends when I was a kid, whose brothers were very close in age, and they would beat the crap out of each other. And I could understand that that was sort of a natural thing.”
Hiddleston can’t say yet whether Loki and Thor are still beating on each other in “Thor 2.” He had not yet received the script, so he’s as curious as any other fan about what Loki will be up to next.
“What’s interesting for me is whether he’s redeemable now at this point. … Can he be forgiven by Thor, by Odin, and can he forgive himself?” Hiddleston said. “Is he even self-aware enough to know that’s what he needs?”
Tune in late next year to find out.
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Online:
http://marvel.com/avengers_movie
LOS ANGELES (AP) — You better know how to wisecrack if you’re going to save the world, Joss Whedon-style.
Whedon, creator of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” its spinoff “Angel” and other witty TV ensembles such as “Firefly” and “Dollhouse,” applies his own superpower — playful dialogue and group camaraderie — as writer and director of the superhero mash-up “The Avengers.”
The film is filled with clever interplay among its garishly costumed cast, which includes Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Mark Ruffalo as the Incredible Hulk, Chris Evans as Captain America and Chris Hemsworth as Norse god of thunder Thor.
As with Buffy or Whedon’s other fantasy-based creations, the gags make the action go down more credibly as the Avengers battle Thor’s wicked brother and a swarm of ugly aliens invading Earth.
“I never write anything without humor, just because I like humor, but at the same time, it is a way for anything fantastical to become relatable,” Whedon said. “Because you can always turn around and go, ‘That guy’s the god of thunder, and this is really happening!’ And then if anybody in the audience was having a problem with that, they’re sort of inoculated to it.”
It’s doubtful many fans need an inoculation to get into the Avengers spirit. The Marvel Comics universe has been steering toward this all-star ensemble for years with sly teasers tacked onto such earlier hits as “Iron Man,” ”Thor” and “Captain America.”
Anticipation for the film is off the charts, and having Whedon running the show reassures Marvel fanboys that it’s been done right, since he’s been one of them from childhood, and informs general audiences that it’s worth their time, since he has a gift for taking far-out tales into the mainstream.
The film opens in U.S. theaters May 4 and a bit earlier in many overseas territories.
“The Avengers” were among the first comic books Whedon read as a boy. The influence of the superhero ensemble and its complicated, crazy interrelations is obvious through much of Whedon’s work.
“The great thing about this team is, there’s an element of absurdity to the idea of the Avengers, and there always was. You read the first issue, and you’re like, ‘Really? REALLY? This is a team?’” Whedon said. “That thread kind of carried through the whole history of the Avengers, and their constant changes in lineup became almost a joke. There was this issue I read when I was a kid when a government official came in and dictated their lineup, including how many minorities needed to be included.
“You have to let that absurdity bleed into the characters, because if you don’t let the audience laugh at it, they’re going to LAUGH at it, and not the way you want.”
Much of the humor derives from the growing pains the Avengers experience, squabbling among one another before they learn to work as a team. These are big egos used to having their own way, so the idea of cooperation does not come easily.
Many of the actors were used to having their own way in solo superhero adventures, but cooperation did come easily for them, Whedon said.
“I had concerns, but my refrain was always, ‘If they hate each other, I can use it,’” Whedon said. “And at the end of the day, they just had a great time together. Everybody was really on board. Everybody was looking out for everybody else. Everybody was thrilled to work with the people they worked with and cranky because they couldn’t work with the people they didn’t work with.
“It really was a positive bunch that had the kind of energy that helps pull you out of bed when you’ve got to shoot a movie that long.”
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Online:
http://marvel.com/avengers_movie
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Billionaire genius Tony Stark had to learn to play well with others in “The Avengers” after two “Iron Man” films where he was the main attraction.
So did Robert Downey Jr., though his path to superhero team player came without the fisticuffs and rivalries that Stark stumbles into with his fellow Avengers, who beat up on one another a bit before they figure out how to work as a group.
Downey’s had a long time to get ready for something beyond his close-up in the solo outings as Stark, the Marvel Comics superhero in a metal suit. The idea that Downey would become part of an ensemble of heroes was teased at the end of the first “Iron Man,” with “Avengers” producer and Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige steering such follow-ups as “Thor” and “Captain America: The First Avenger” toward that aim.
“I had five years to prepare myself, because Kevin Feige and the Marvel team had been saying that it was kind of heading toward this,” Downey said.
Opening in the United States on May 4 and a week earlier in some overseas markets, “The Avengers” casts Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, head of peacekeeping agency S.H.I.E.L.D., which rounds up a dream team of good guys (Downey’s Iron Man, Scarlett Johansson’s Black Widow, Chris Hemsworth’s Thor, Chris Evans’ Captain America, Mark Ruffalo’s Incredible Hulk and Jeremy Renner’s Hawkeye) to battle Thor’s evil brother (Tom Hiddleston), who plots to subjugate humanity.
While it’s an all-star cast, Downey’s the mega-star. But unlike the diva moments among Stark and some of the other alpha dogs of the Avengers, there was no big-footing among the performers, according to the actors and director Joss Whedon.
Adjusting to ensemble life simply continued the path on which Stark and his healthy ego have been all along, Downey said.
“Personally, the ‘Iron Man’ series so far has always been about making space for others and collaborating,” Downey said. “It’s Tony’s quote-unquote story, but it’s always about all the folks we get around him who are kind of what make him interesting or give him someone or something to fight.”
Stitching together so many characters and story-lines could have turned into herding cats, but the communal structure meant no single actor had to carry the action all of the time.
Everyone took turns at center stage, and each got to take welcome breathers during the long shoot, Downey said.
“It was like a complicated pregnancy,” Downey said. “What was fun, this bit of WWE superhero tag-team wrestling, is where Hemsworth’s all beat up and he’s been shooting nights, and my character’s got the helmet closed, so I’m not there. Then he’s flying home to be with the missus, and I’m coming in to do a bunch of scenes with Ruffalo. I think everybody really bought into the spirit of the thing.”
Downey, 47, is preparing to shoot “Iron Man 3,” which is due in theaters in May 2013. The film reunites Downey with his “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” director Shane Black.
He won’t disclose details, but Downey said the next installment is a “sort of storytelling that’s really in Shane’s wheelhouse, which is it doesn’t need to be quite as linear, and Tony definitely is brought out of his comfort zone. So there’s a lot of travel in this.”
A third “Sherlock Holmes” movie also is in the works, with Downey’s great detective expected to travel to North America this time.
Amid his two film franchises, Downey’s busy with a newborn son with his wife, producer Susan Downey, with whom he has formed a film production company.
It’s uncertain whether Downey will be back as Stark after “Iron Man 3,” either in another solo film or a second “Avengers” tale. With his fourth Marvel flick getting under way, though, Downey said he feels he has a vested interest in the superhero business.
“It’s dumb not to be open to possibilities, you know?” Downey said. “I kind of almost feel like a shareholder in the company, even sometimes more than an actor in the movies.”
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Online:
http://marvel.com/avengers_movie
In this film image released by Sony Pictures Classics, Maggie Gyllenhaal portrays Charlotte Dalrymple in a scene from "Hysteria." (AP Photo/Sony Pictures Classics, Liam Daniel)(Credit: AP) 
In this April 12, 2012 photo, cast member Mark Ruffalo, from the upcoming film "The Avengers", poses for a portrait in Beverly Hills, Calif. The film will be released in theaters on May 4. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)(Credit: AP) 
In this April 12, 2012 photo, cast member Tom Hiddleston, from the upcoming film "The Avengers", poses for a portrait in Beverly Hills, Calif. The film will be released in theaters May 4, 2012. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)(Credit: AP) 
In this April 12, 2012 photo, writer and director Joss Whedon, from the upcoming film "The Avengers", poses for a portrait in Beverly Hills, Calif. The film will be released in theaters May 4. (AP Photo/Matt Sayles)(Credit: AP) 