Word: hapless
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...stars in the Saturday Night Live era (a line that stretches from Bill Murray to Seth Rogen) sport a louche, slackerish affability, Stiller often plays the less-than-pleasant comic foil: the tightly wound unhero who either gets on everyone's nerves (Dodgeball, The Royal Tenenbaums) or is the hapless pawn of domestic fate (Meet the Fockers, The Heartbreak Kid). As actor, writer or director, he knows something most Hollywood people don't: certain characters needn't be lap-dog lovable--if they're funny enough, the movies they're in can still be hits...
...long after Barack Obama returned from his heady global tour last weekend, the contest accelerated abruptly and took on an edgier, headlong, take-no-prisoners tone. John McCain went from seeming lost and playing hapless defense to more focused offense. We'll learn soon how long that lasts, and at what price, but there were several days last week when McCain's team actually seemed in control of what passes for the campaign conversation. Obama saw his already thin lead narrow in a few places and was hinting by the end of the week that he might moderate his unpopular...
...Judd Apatow movies. The stupor Bud drinks himself into each evening leaves him barely able to drag himself to work the next morning, let alone care for his young daughter Molly (Madeline Carroll). His employer has been "insourcing" Mexicans who'll work for less money and firing hapless guys like Bud. It's no wonder that feeling disenfranchised, disaffected and perennially dissed, he belongs to what would be by far the largest U.S. political party: the We Don't Voters...
...sort of low-humming cultural unease about suicides on the Tube, which are readily announced over station intercoms as the reason for delays, presumably to allay fears of terrorism. A movie in general release, Three and Out, attempted to turn this unease into dark comedy by portraying a hapless Tube driver who tries to exploit a (fictional) loophole in his contract that grants him early retirement if he witnesses three suicides from his train. The film misjudged the nation's mood and was savaged by film critics, mental-health workers and the train drivers' union, whose members picketed outside...
...since 1975 -- but then squirrelly is a feeling Vietnam gives you these days. Out yonder was a gunless gunboat, its Vietnamese colors set off against a red gob of sun. In the bar was flat, skunky-tasting beer that had sat in the heat for a year, though the hapless representative of San Miguel, a Filipino brewery, insisted that he had accompanied 70,000 fresh cases into the country; they just got away from him, is all. An Australian sportswear manufacturer brought $20,000 worth of clothes to Danang, but they got away from him too. The host country kept...