I’ve noticed among my cinema-frequenting friends that perhaps the biggest theatergoing story of the last year is Glenn Powell. He’s bringing families back to the Movies (physical) with Top Gun: Maverick and Twisters. During a time when folks feel like Hollywood is searching for that feel-good thoroughfare again—a dizzy and bustling Broadway for blockbusters—Glenn Powell seems to, somehow, embody it totally. There’s fun at the theaters again. AMC executives are feeling very light on their feet.
We, of course, love a brand new gravitational pull whenever one comes around (shoutout to Earth’s second moon!). But some things are as old and alluring as the tides themselves. Re-enter Hollywood’s most reliable 21st-century frontmen: George Clooney and Brad Pitt.
Two strangers come to town
Yes, I did intentionally name Clooney first when referencing the duo above. Wolfs is much more a re-arrival for Clooney than for Pitt. The latter has marqueed his way through the last five years with films like Babylon, Bullet Train, Ad Astra, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
And there’s certainly a meta-play on this in Wolfs‘s narrative premise: Pitt’s character and Clooney’s don’t know each other before minute one of the film. Jon Watt’s self-penned script sees our boys as lone-wolf (get it?) fixers who both get called to clean up the same mess. The hijinks are accompanied, at least in the trailer, by a whimsical, jazzy, standing-bass score that evokes Ocean’s something fierce.
I like this idea of the comedy being about two smooth slickers who can’t stop bumping into each other, getting in each other’s way. A failure of proprioception between two movie stars who exude the sense that they navigate through this world with nothing but a cool breeze—never in anyone’s way, just passing through. It’s a little Rush Hour-y, and I say that with excitement.
This might be the first time we’ve seen Pitt and Clooney tag-team the big screen with this kind of rom-commy, will-they-won’t-they, what-does-one-character-find-as-counterpart-in-the-other dynamic. And it’s not by chance. It’s clearly a poke at Clooney’s return to the screen after what feels like almost a decade of clunkers. He’s yet to be a compelling leading man since his ensemble role in the Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar! in 2016.
I’m sure Clooney himself would take issue with that. He’s been a bit boorish—wonderfully so, I might add—on this press tour about just how firmly-entrenched a Hollywood superstar he remains. At 63 years old he’s done away with any sort of red carpet filter. Here’s what he had to say about Quentin Tarantino suggesting he’s not a movie star (taken from an August 13th interview in GQ):
Quentin said some s—t about me recently, so I’m a little irritated by him. He did some interview where he was naming movie stars, and he was talking about you (Pitt), and somebody else, and then this guy goes, “Well, what about George?” He goes, he’s not a movie star. And then he literally said something like, “Name me a movie since the millennium.” And I was like, “Since the millennium? That’s kind of my whole f——g career.”
Well then. A bit glib by Tarantino, there. But the sentiment remains: we know Pitt’s going to bring it (remember how awesome he was in Bullet Train? Sheesh!), so Clooney better be on full tilt.
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