Cloverfield Is Familiar But Frisky

You may be resisting Cloverfield precisely because it's so clear that Paramount did everything to sneak it into your consciousness see a trailer here) under the new corporate marketing logic that says the audience that finds a movie (or album,video game, vodka, etc.) on its own will embrace it more fully and make the sale for you through word of mouth.

But the really sneaky part is, the dang thing is enjoyable. Yes, the conceit of a "found" video camera containing the hair-raising footage we watch derives from Blair Witch, and yes, the monster, for all the fan boy back-and-forth about it, is original but not particularly haunting. In fact, the monster and the destruction it wreaks on Manhattan (shades of everything from Escape From New York to I Am Legend) are less the point here than the love story that's threaded through it. Played with commitment by relative film newcomers Michael Stahl-David (Rob) and Odette Yustman (Beth), the central pair make us want them to reunite amidst the carnage and--the 9/11 resemblances are impossible to ignore--toppling buildings. It's video shooter Hud who get the more funny and pointed lines, including the signal, "You got to learn to say, f**k the world and hang on to the people you care about the most." But it's the older snippets of footage of Rob and Beth on a halcyon day, which Hud is shoting over with occasional deadly interruptions, that makes us care whether the big lizard gets to eat the cadre of faithful friends.

Shot for about $25 million with a cast that barely knew what they were being hired for ,and under considerable secrecy (thus director Matt Reeves, producer J.J. Abrams' longtime pal but inexperienced with monster fare, has had to fend off accusations he was Abrams' stand-in. But the film's real strengths are n he more amiable part of Abrams' formulation--"a Cameron Crowe movie meets Godzilla meets Blair Witch Project."

The film's success has coincided with a row of articles with atta-boys for the studio, including a friendly New York Times profile of Paramount production chief Brad Grey and the Los Angeles Times' Patrick Goldstein's awarding the sometimes-embattled studio a spot near the top of his annual Studio Report Card. The pundits have predicted big box office for the film, despite a dogfight in its natural demographic with 27 Dresses, and the weekend seems likely to bring more plaudits for a smart piece of recognizing, and deploying, a marketable movie made for a price.

(Michael Stahl-David and Odette Yustman in Cloverfield);Photo courtesy Paramount Pictures)