Clint Eastwood is in danger of taking himself too seriously. After a terrifying opening sequence, his latest venture quickly gets tangled in its own entrails. Without trite foreshadowing or “Inception”-style ominous music, the audience plunges into nail-biting chaos as the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 rips across the frame, crashing down on Marie Lelay (Cecile de France) and arresting the viewer in full-throttle anxiety. As Eastwood’s subsequent musings take form, “Hereafter”’s realism soon becomes crippled by a cramped, inconsistent production.

The film tails the separate lives of three characters — Lelay, a French journalist who narrowly survives the aforementioned natural disaster; George Lonegan (Matt Damon), a lonely psychic who’s haunted by his ability to communicate with the dead; and Marcus (Frankie McLaren), a boy devastated by the recent death of his twin brother. Predictably, their lives intersect, as each learns an important lesson about acceptance, love and whatever other bullshit Oprah is pushing nowadays. Lonegan also schools us on fraudulent psychic “readings” as hazy images of deceased family members cracking jokes come to the forefront, urging us to “move on” before it’s too late. Occasionally, this jives well with the subdued tone and beautiful, perpetually overcast cinematography of the film. More often, it doesn’t.

“Hereafter” stands on uneven ground. Brilliant performances by Damon, de France and Bryce Dallas Howard (as a girl Damon meets at a cooking class) are propped awkwardly against those unconvincingly delivered by the McLaren brothers — two newcomers cast by Eastwood to avoid the schmaltz of Hollywood, at the expense of the film’s acting credibility. The complex and nuanced relationship between the twin boys and their heroin-addicted single mother (Lyndsey Marshal) is lost in frames like the one that depicts an absurdly hackneyed and unprovoked band of teenagers as they chase one campy twin (whichever of the two you perceive to be less talented, if you can discern such a thing) into oncoming traffic.

Despite the acting inconsistency, “Hereafter”’s unconventional premise — a combination of supernatural mystery and downplayed existential drama — feels fresh. But after two hours, the film’s meandering ultimately becomes more strenuous than captivating. It becomes increasingly difficult to know what Eastwood is trying to convey, or if he’s trying to convey anything at all.

At its best, “Hereafter” is a meditative slice-of-life that doesn’t claim to know the answers, instead leading us to question our own interpretations of mortality. At its worst, the film remains a decisive reminder that the 80-year-old actor/director can still craft a lukewarm murder-mystery — and outstrip M. Night Shyamalan in the same stroke.

“Hereafter” could be salvaged if it weren’t for the baffling, two-dimensional finale that forces the film to switch gears from the expected slow-moving drama to an out-of-nowhere romance — all within the last ten minutes.

It’s still tolerable, though. “Hereafter” exudes tension, drama and enough interesting ideas to merit some semblance of an audience. But after this one dies at the box office, we won’t hear from its ghost again.  (C+)

Kings of Leon
Come Around Sundown
RCA

They got their start as the bearded Southern Strokes. With some glossier production, they became the beardless Southern U2, and now, as it turns out, the brothers (and cousin) that make up Kings of Leon are somewhere in between.

Following some post-haircut backlash from their hipster fans, Kings of Leon’s new album Come Around Sundown is neither a continuation of the commercially successful Only by the Night nor an entirely new experience. The band has called it “breezy” and “fun,” and with an album cover depicting palm trees at sundown, that assessment is not surprising.

But “fun” isn’t something that has been entirely lost to Kings of Leon in the past. Before the fatally serious Night, the Followills still had a Tennessee edge — playing simple garage-rock like the four average bros they claim to be.

Not that Kings of Leon has completely abandoned their rough-and-tumble roots. “Mi Amigo” is a pleasantly cool step back to the band’s original sound that’s tailor-made for their favorite pastime: drinking. With a great sing-along refrain and a thumping beat, the track begs you to raise a glass of beer in the air and cheer. “Beach Side” (which stays true to its name) is similarly laid back, featuring relaxed guitars that could almost be the soundtrack to a Hawaiian tourism ad.

The paradoxically titled opener “The End,” however, reaffirms the band’s rep as the dreaded second-rate U2 rip-off. Like previous smash hit “Use Somebody,” the track builds from excruciatingly melancholic verses to an explosive finale. It’s a formula that fills up stadiums, but for a band that used to flaunt Southern authenticity, it all seems rather contrived.

Yet somehow the tune sticks with you — a sensation largely due to Caleb Followill’s raspy voice, which continues to be one of the band’s best-utilized features. Caleb is especially noteworthy on the head-banging lead single “Radioactive,” leading a catchy chorus that morphs into a falsetto-laden breakdown. Album closer “Pickup Truck” is another highlight, rife with emotional lyrics that, as per usual, ascend to a bombastic ending. The track — expected fireworks and all — is hand crafted for the encores of their many festival-headlining sets.

With their Jack Daniels-fueled guitar solos and signature vocals, Kings of Leon certainly knows how to craft appealing rock ’n’ roll tunes. Yet by the end of Come Around Sundown, it’s obvious that they are also a band with no distinct direction. The move towards a mellowed-out beachside vibe is a welcome breather from the serious Night, but Kings of Leon still needs to lighten up a bit more. (7/10)

“Red” has star power to spare — the cast is littered with cinematic giants like Bruce Willis, Helen Mirren, Morgan Freeman, John Malkovich and Mary Louise Parker. That’s about where the good points end. Despite all the sparkle in the credits, the film’s lackluster effort is reminiscent of other uninspiring action-comedies, except all the players are a few decades older.

“Red” outlines the dull life of Frank Moses (Willis), a retired CIA agent who spends his time adjusting to the suburbs and making glacially slow romantic advances over the phone to a frumpy woman he has never met. But when young CIA operatives attempt to kill him, Frank has to figure out why his prior employers are after him, roping his telephone girlfriend and a cast of quirky-yet-deadly former coworkers into the ensuing debacle.

There’s Joe (Freeman), aging master of disguise, who takes the screen with Marvin (Malkovich), a hyper-paranoid former-LSD-experimentee and Victoria (Mirren), a seductive but dangerous sharpshooter. Together they face the greatest challenge of their careers: breaking into the CIA and discovering why they have suddenly appeared on the government’s (s)hit list. Cue “Mission Impossible” theme music.

Don’t be fooled — “Red” devolves into a lurching archetypal mess by the end of the opening credits, trying to salvage a mundane action story peppered with retirement jokes and an uncomfortably odd Hollywood romance between Frank and Sarah Ross (Parker). Though the action sequences are well-executed (Malkovitch blows some bitches’ heads off while Willis fights with more grace than we could ever muster), they seem unnatural for a group of actors that probably hold membership to the AARP.

“Red” has enough blood to film another “Saw” and bullets for a redneck’s lifetime supply, but the film’s other elements fell surprisingly flat. Although intended as a nod to Sarah’s long-harbored wish to travel, the postcard-themed titles looked kiddy-kitschy in a flick so obsessed with its own masculinity.

Despite its numerous ticks, “Red” did do one man good: John Malkovich is brilliant as the severely affected Marvin. Armed and talented, paranoid and absolutely insane, Malkovich shines. Though we always questioned his sanity, the actor’s mania reaches new heights. Touting an enthusiasm akin to an overgrown kid at a candy carnival, Malkovitch swings an over-sized gun like a bat, hitting grenades back to their punk-ass sources as he spits, curses and cackles. Taking us back to the zenith of spy action, Malkovich reminds us why it’s awesome to, well, be John Malkovich.

Sadly, outside of the Malkovich variety hour, “Red” struggles by on life support. The minds behind “Red” seem to think action is the best remedy for Alzheimer’s and arthritis. We think Grandpa will agree; age may come before beauty, but never before plot. (C)

Lil Wayne
I Am Not A Human Being
Young Money

Somewhere deep within Rikers Penitentiary, Lil Wayne is laughing. You’d laugh too, if — like Weezy —you could release anything (even behind bars), regardless of quality, and still sell millions of copies.

Lil Wayne’s new EP, I Am Not A Human Being, can easily give off a half-assed vibe. But while a lot of the music initially sounds uninspired, you still can’t deny that Wayne is one of the most inventive lyricists around.

Exhibit A: “And when I came/ She caught me like the common cold,” Wayne asserts on the standout Drake track “With You.” Yes, his rhymes are still hilarious, disgusting and sometimes brilliant.  Exhibit B: “Pussy in the bedroom,” Weezy raps on “Hold Up,” “pass that bitch down like an heirloom.” It comes off as absurd, but with his signature raspy delivery, the rhyme almost sounds genius.

Other highlights include “I’m Single” — a bleak examination of the pratfalls of relationship status — and the bizarrely straightforward Nicki Minaj track, “What’s Wrong With Them.” Despite such gems, the album lacks some of the magic that made Tha Carter III so refreshing.

Most of the tracks are listenable, but some, like the rock-leaning title track, are just plain bad. Though not as embarrassing as anything off Rebirth (Weezy’s regrettable attempt at rock music), it still leaves you wishing you could prevent Wayne from ever discovering guitars in the first place.

Wayne’s rhymes still harbor the maniacal glee that made his previous albums such a delight, but he just seems slightly off his game. His flow is lazier than usual, and his similes and puns are a shade less clever. Unfair as these high standards may seem, for someone like Lil Wayne — who has proven himself as a dynamic performer before — this lack of attention is unforgivable.

But a sub-par Lil Wayne album is still a Lil Wayne album, and we’ll take what we can get. (6/10)

The Fresh & Onlys
Play It Strange
In the Red

The first decade of the 2000s had music veering in every direction with the advent of digital production and more fad genres than you can shake a drumstick at.  Still, as titillating as novelty is, sometimes all we crave is the noise of yesteryear.

Cue The Fresh & Onlys.  One of many recent acts to forgo the modern in favor of reanimating an earlier era, they’ve attained exposure in under two years for their music’s psychedelic tendencies.  Play It Strange continues their cloudy resonance by minimizing production, or at least concealing evidence of any.  String and percussion melt into a homogenous sea, and lead vocalist Tim Cohen swirls in his voice almost indistinguishably. But unfortunately, indistinguishable becomes far too big of a key word here, as the album fails to make any kind of unique impact.

The band strays far enough from mainstream rock to find a niche sound, but they exercise it by recycling song structures.  The album scouts the same frontier for so long that it feels like an actual road trip — after a while, you just want to curl up in the backseat and take a nap.

Their last full-length, Grey-Eyed Girls, became an underground hit for similar ----fuzzy tunage.  But lost is the kick-in-the-pants factor that previously transported them to another era.  Play it Strange shows the talent and vision needed for a journey, yet it refuses to travel in new directions.

Sure, the aesthetic can be fetching.  The band cavorts between surf and rockabilly in songs like “All Shook Up“ and “Waterfall.” Yet tracks like the classily named “By My Hooker” follow, droning along and repeating the same hazy lo-fi reverbs and vintage-punk warbles.

While there are a few pleasant moments, the album becomes a muddled reverie by the end.  Indeed, The Fresh & Onlys live up to their moniker on this record.  They have a refreshingly unrefined sound. Too bad it’s the only sound they make.

La Jolla Playhouse can’t get enough of the Chaplins. After the whimsical performance of Charlie Chaplin’s granddaughter in last season’s “Aurelia’s Oratorio,” the Tramp himself gets a livelier close-up in the Playhouse’s latest production,  “Limelight: The Story of Charlie Chaplin.” And no, the irony of the silent film star retelling his story in piano chords is not lost on anyone. By the end of all the musical’s overdrawn clichés, though, the delightfully twisted vantage point seems uninspired.

Under the direction of Warren Carlyle and Michael Unger, “Limelight” adds flashy color to the life of a film legend usually relegated to reels of black and white. The musical traverses largely unchartered territory in Chaplin’s life, from his orphan days in the late 1800s to his debauchery in Hollywood’s Golden Age, followed by his downfall at the hands of McCarthyism. Sadly, so faithful is the production to the cause of a biography that it often forfeits coherence in plot.

The first scene opens with a hapless Chaplin (William Youmans) sitting in a barren theater at the premiere of his latest film. Nostalgic for his earlier successes, Chaplin asks for his first one-reeler to be projected onto the screen. Thus begins “Limelight’s” frame narrative, as out from the screen emerges a cast of lower-class Londoners, including young Charlie (Jake Evan Schwenke).

Young Charlie first learns pantomime under his mother’s (Ashley Brown) guidance. “Once you find the story behind each [person],” she instructs him in song, “then you just play the part.” But Charlie’s family ties are soon reduced to shambles when Hannah is declared insane and the mutton-chopped owner of an orphanage steals Charlie and his brother Sid away from her.

The brothers live off filching until their slapstick means of robbery catch the attention of music hall owner Fred Karno  (Eddie Korbich). From there, Charlie (now played by the older Rob McClure) gets recruited to American silent film. He takes a leap of faith across the pond, only to be met by the capitalist tendencies of Hollywood directors who forgo things like “character” and “rehearsals” for the idiosyncrasies that made him the big bucks.  From this downtrodden onset is born the iconic Tramp: the moustache, bowler hat, baggy pants and handicapped walk. “Look how I’ve changed my story,” he tells the audience, in awe of his own fame.

In spite of the upbeat numbers and vaudeville throwback, “Limelight” remains predominantly doleful in tone. One of the most amusing (and too infrequent) scenes features Charlie lampooning Hitler in his first talkie, “The Great Dictator,” where he attunes “I’m a Little Teapot” to the gesticulations and acrid tone of Hitler in a dead-on voiceover. But there’s not enough goof, not enough guffaw.

Though it breaks new ground in its retelling of Chaplin’s life, “Limelight” ultimately finds itself to be a schmaltzy musical. It’s rife with morals that rival the likes of Forrest Gump. Take, for example, Charlie’s epiphany in the final scene: “Life isn’t a movie. You can’t go back and edit it.” Profound.

The songs, composed by Christopher Curtis, are catchy on first listen but easily forgettable. Some duets have the actors singing simultaneously over one another in a way that neither set of lyrics are clear.

“Limelight” is buttressed by the talent of its supporting actors. Matthew Scott’s Sid, in particular, is compassionate as an older brother should be, without becoming trite. But “Limelight” serves as a reminder that flapper pizzazz and reverberant tunes alone can’t account for a good musical. As with the silent films of Chaplin’s time, sometimes black and white is just fine. (C+)

Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois was an intricate celebration of life and Americana that raised the bar impossibly high for fellow singer-songwriter contenders. That was half a decade ago. Since then, he’s given us an album of “outtakes,” a five-disc anthology of Christmas songs and a soundtrack for his film about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Those releases were great and all — albeit somewhat random — but they left us wondering: Will our erratic hero ever release another Michigan or Seven Swans?

After years of anticipation, The Age of Adz answers this question with a resounding “no.” What takes the expected folk album’s place, however, is something much more intriguing.

The piano and pizzicato strings of “Futile Devices” opens the album with a familiar delicacy, but quickly reveal themselves as a bait-and-switch for the surprising sounds that filter through the rest of it: glitchy electronic beats, sweeping orchestrations and epic choruses. No subtle acoustics or simple melodies here — Adz is a dense, beautiful mess.

“Too Much” is quirky, smiling pop, but Stevens’s sheer joy and earnestness keeps it from becoming trite or boring. The same goes for the 26-minute-long closer “Impossible Soul,” which holds our interest well into its exhilarating sing-along climax.

Even when the album descends into atmospheric chaos — as in the meandering “Now That I’m Older,” or the middle-school-marching-band title track — Adz gives way to another distinct beat or melody long before it gets tedious.

In an interview last year for Exclaim! Magazine, Stevens mentioned his descent into a full-blown existential music crisis. He brooded extensively over the purpose of a song and whether he should bother to continue with any future albums.

In Adz, this frustration is apparent. Even with 75 minutes at his disposal, there is still a sense that The Age of Adz can’t contain all that Stevens wants to say. Toward the end, “I Want To Be Well” encapsulates this meltdown, leading to a startlingly profound refrain: “I’m not fucking around/ I’m not, I’m not, I’m not fucking around.” He really isn’t. (8/10)

For the few who have seen 1992’s “Honeymoon in Vegas” — a daft romantic comedy starring third-rate Coppola Nicolas Cage and pre-“Sex” Sarah Jessica Parker — a certain croon may strike a chord in your well-trained ears. Amidst the legions of Elvis impersonators that breeze through the mostly forgettable movie, there is a sneak peek of six-year-old Bruno Mars — the man behind the hooks of this summer’s “Nothin’ On You” and “Billionaire,” as well as his own monster hit “Just the Way You Are.”

Get on YouTube and witness the phenomenon: Dressed like the King in a blue jumpsuit, baby-Mars sings “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You,” all while flaunting Elvis’ signature hip-shake and snarl. Given this get-up, it’s hard to believe this kid would grow up to coin 2010’s biggest earworms (Or get arrested for cocaine possession in Las Vegas, of all places), but man… rocking a pompadour before he hit double digits, he’s already a freakin’ star.

If his terrifying childhood stage presence isn’t any indication, the Hawaiian native (with his production team the Smeezingtons) has been responsible for gems like Cee Lo Green’s Internet hit “Fuck You” and last year’s infectious “Right Round” by Flo Rida. On top of that, on his debut album Doo-Wops & Hooligans, Mars tries on every genre for size, proving he’s got the chops to be a versatile singer and songwriter.

Looking at Mars’ resumé, you’d expect a certain kind of album: hip-hop beats, smooth vocals, lots of soul. Those elements are certainly all there, but Mars goes big on his debut, giving every kind of sound at least a small share of the spotlight. There’s reggae in the Damian Marley collaboration “Liquor Store Blues,” Sade-like sex in the unsubtly titled “Our First Time” and Jason Mraz pluckiness in “The Lazy Song” — a track that dares to rhyme “snuggie” and “dougie,” a lyrical morsel that could be totally awesome, or as it turns out, awesomely bad.

As expected, some experiments work better than others. Mars’ forays into melodically sweet ballads are excruciating and melodramatic (namely “Talking to the Moon” and the droning first single “Just the Way You Are”). Yet when he stops raving about how wonderful his girlfriend is and mans up a bit, his smooth voice goes down a lot more easily.

So while the album is a bit hit-or-miss, by offering at least a little something for everyone, Doo-Wops & Hooligans makes for a perfect pop debut with plenty of room for development.

Check out Bruno Mars when he performs  at Price Center on Nov. 19.

The concept of being buried alive is unpleasant for most folks, and though being accompanied by the ever-charming Ryan Reynolds may sweeten the trauma, claustrophobic filmgoers may want to give this flick a pass.

If you can’t decide whether “Buried” is the film for you, ask yourself (except you, Scarlett Johansson. We already know how you feel on the matter): Does being trapped in a cramped space in the dark for over an hour with Reynolds seem like a blast?

There isn’t much else to the film — what you see is what you get. Here’s the rundown: Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds) has been buried alive and only has at his disposal a lighter, a cell phone and a quickly diminishing amount of air. With these few items, you expect the rest of the film’s plot to unravel predictably. Paul screams for help as hordes of special teams units panic and his wife and young son dissolve into tears when they hear his voice over the phone. But refreshingly — delightfully, even — those assumptions are wrong.

Spanish director Rodrigo Cortés didn’t concern himself at all with the standard thriller formula in the making of “Buried.” He determined that the only way to put us into Paul’s mindset as he struggles for life in his wooden box was, essentially, to put us in the box — for the entire 95 minutes of the film. When Paul is in the dark, the audience is, quite literally, in the dark with him. There is no night vision camera to show us what he is doing, and sometimes the darkness lasts for unprecedented lengths of time. The audience’s discomfort is palpable.

But perhaps this is a good thing. Paul Conroy certainly isn’t comfortable. He is sweating and breathless and bleeding — and we can see it all at an unnervingly close distance. The camera, also confined to the coffin, is hell-bent on examining every inch of the terror and pain shooting through his body.

For the film’s only actor, the pressure is on. Ryan Reynolds, of washboard abs and pearly whites fame, dives into the restricted role surprisingly well — a real shocker considering he is best known for comedies such as “Van Wilder” and “The Proposal.” However, in “Buried,” Reynolds is out to prove that he isn’t just the funny man with a hot body. Fortunately, Reynolds sweats and curses with the best of them and carries the film’s colossal weight on his own. True, voices can be heard on the phone, but for all intents and purposes, this is a one-man movie.

Some people will be unhappy about this. Watching one man cope with the possibility of his own death so realistically is not your typical nachos-and-Icee fare. At no point is the film enjoyable to look at, but with suspense that sticks with you long after the lights have come back up, that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth watching.

Some say Fox is where television shows go to die (or die and be resurrected, if you’re “Family Guy”). It’s easy to jump on this bandwagon — especially if you are a fan of such fallen favorites as “Arrested Development” and “Firefly.” But not all Fox shows meet an unfortunately early end.

It’s Kind of a Funny Story” has a problematic title. Between the watercolor cityscapes that ornament the trailer and the film’s cast of teenage misfits, “Funny Story” promises the snark and irony of “Juno,” but strays — despite well-meaning attempts, it’s not very funny at all.

Written and directed by the “Half Nelson” duo of Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck, the film profiles a suicidal teenager named Craig (Keir Gilchrist) and the oddballs he meets at a psychiatric hospital. Once behind the hospital’s promising doors, however, the shallowness of its characters and the predictable plot leaves us reaching for a capsule of Zoloft faster than its depressed protagonist.

Based on the 2006 novel by Ned Vizzini, “Funny Story” chronicles Craig’s mental collapse when the pressure at his elite high school proves too much. Craig’s commitment to his family — composed of a workaholic father, “fragile” mother and bespectacled “child genius” sister — later foils his attempt at suicide and prompts him to check into Argenon Hospital instead.

There, amongst the psychiatric ward’s array of crackpots, Craig finds the answer to all his adolescent woes. He falls in love with chronic cutter Noelle (Emma Roberts) and befriends cleft-lipped Humble (Matthew Maher), all while sharing nights with his roommate, a middle-aged Egyptian recluse named Muqtada (Bernard White).

Equally neurotic patients that populate Argenon include a post-Patriot Act schizophrenic and Solomon (Daniel London), a Hasidic Jew who can no longer tolerate noise after an ill-fated acid trip.

One side effect of this madcap ensemble is that the film only has time to glibly skim over these characters. In crafting “Funny Story,” Boden and Fleck sought to avoid the cynicism and sarcasm of modern teenage films and to instead pay tribute to the idyllic John Hughes films of yore (namely “The Breakfast Club”). But, while the characters in those ‘80s films are so well-developed that they render the plot inconsequential, “Funny Story” brings together half-developed characters and a half-developed plot that, in the end, amount to a half-hearted coming-of-age tale.

The only believable and sympathetic patient that Craig befriends is Zach Galifianakis’ (“The Hangover”) Bobby. A self-described Doogie Howser in his own right, Bobby steers Craig clear from his depression, just as Craig unintentionally returns the favor as the two become friends. In lieu of Bobby’s green sweater that “smells like a hobo’s Band-Aid,” Craig donates his uppity dad’s collared shirt and preps Bobby for a group home interview.

That two-way mentorship did not carry over off-screen. “There was no really, like, ‘Keir, alright I’m going to teach you the ropes now,’” Gilchrist said of his relationship with Galifianakis. “There were a lot of people who were mentors on the set, and Zach was just one of them.”

To be sure, Keir’s placid look of naiveté does a lot for his character. A Justin Long look-a-like, the young actor maintains a bored, deadpan face throughout the film that was probably intended to resemble angst. If we’re supposed to interpret him as being emblematic of the everyday teenager, it serves Craig well. The teenage tendency to punctuate spoken sentences with “ums,” “you knows,” and “sort ofs,” shows that Keir still has a ways to go before reaching the thespian fluency of his veteran counterparts.

Galifianakis, on the other hand, proves to be the redeeming factor in this otherwise manic disorder of a film. What drew the screwball comedian toward the dark side of drama was Bobby’s complex temperament. “He’s fragile and a little bit on the edge,” Galifianakis said. “And also, he has the capacity to be angry, so it wasn’t really a departure from real life.”

Full-bearded as ever in “Funny Story,” Galifianakis insists — teasingly of course — that he can’t shave off his mane of fame.

“I have a terrible skin affliction,” he said. “I have a port wine stain in the shape of India. No, I don’t know why the beard is such a thing. People are so focused on it. I’ve had it for 20 years. You save 15 more minutes of sleep if you’re a man and you don’t have to shave it. It’s kind of from laziness.”

The film is equipped with the right cast, including the sadly forgettable Viola Davis, yet it squanders any potentially brilliant performances in search of a middle ground between comedy and drama that it never quite finds.

At the very least, the message of “Funny Story” — to stay grounded, to not internalize our problems and to seek consolation in those around us — strikes a chord with college students. Galifianakis himself can empathize.

“I think the pressure of the college student is ridiculous,” he said. “It’s crazy and hard. When I was in school, there was a lot of pressure — more pressure than any other time in my life, which is why I never really liked school. This ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ kind of mentality that Western society has adopted — it’s bad. It’s good for people who work with ulcers. Chillout, young ones. Chill out.”

Director Davis Guggenheim is exhausted. After long hours on the road, the education crusader is ready for the trip home and an opportunity to spend time with his children, who just saw their father’s [most recent film] “Waiting For ‘Superman,’” in theaters a few weeks ago.

“My kids are lucky, they won the lottery,” Guggenheim said. “I want every kid to win the lottery. My children are asking about the other kids, they want them to be okay. Before they saw the movie, they took what they had for granted — what every kid takes for granted.”

If anyone was going to convince the world that learning is hip, Guggenheim may be the man to do it. He’s spent time with U2 and has an Oscar resting on his mantle-piece. He is the poster boy for unpracticed cool — he breathes it.

“This one was particularly hard,” he admits. “We filmed in Harlem, Washington, East L.A. We also filmed in New Orleans — a bunch of other places. The lotteries [to get into charter schools] were all happening the same week. We couldn’t go to all of them — I couldn’t go to all of them.”

He explains that his colleagues had a wall with every scene in the film taped to it, connecting them. Very John Nash of him.

“Except no genius involved,” he laughs.

Critics seem to disagree. “‘Superman,’” which opens this Friday, follows the story of five children and their families as they battle through public school bureaucracy in hopes of securing a spot at a coveted charter school. No child depicted is the same, except for the enthusiasm about having a richer, more fulfilling education. Some are wealthy, others are poor — all go to terrible schools.

As the film progresses, the children’s stories intertwine with the adults that Guggenheim introduces as the children’s champions, the ones attempting to incite change in the American school system. The struggle is futile, tragically so, and though Guggenheim dices in animation in an attempt to make the film more “fun” and less of an informational burden, the effect the children imparts on the audience is never diminished.

As a director, Guggenheim has parted ways with his rebellious youth (he was fired from his first project). Now, he’s polished. It’s odd to describe a man who’s nearing mid-life with an Academy Award under his belt as “growing,” but the “Inconvenient Truth” director has fully embraced it. He’s coming into his own, he explains, after a long time.

“I don’t feel more confident, but I feel like I have more tools,” Guggenheim said. “There’s a feeling you get when you start a movie, like a pit in your stomach. You know when they work, when they don’t. Every time it’s like, ‘God, how am I going to pull this off again?’”

Out of the four documentaries he’s made thus far, Guggenheim admits that “‘Superman’” is his favorite. For one, “‘Superman”’ has demanded much more of him — both as a director and as a parent — than any other past project. The process was frequently exhaustive, involving collecting data, names and interviewing a number of sources.  Though Guggenheim had originally met with 20 families before cutting it down to the handful featured in the film — he said that choosing which families to feature was surprisingly unchallenging.

“You start with 20, knowing you’re going to end up with around five,” he explains. “[It wasn’t really hard] because 20 became seven really quickly.”

For Guggenheim, the deciding factor was how well families could captivate his — and the audience’s — attention.

“All the kids I met really cared,” he said, “But, you know, [when] you’re a journalist, sometimes you interview people and they’re boring or they’re not articulate.”

He pauses.

“Boring is too strong of a word. Don’t use boring. But when you make a movie, you want people to be able to express themselves.”

Though severing those ties was easy, Guggenheim has made it clear that he intends to follow the progression of each of the children who made it into the film, to help them achieve their dreams and assist them in any way possible.

For the youth of America whose hands he can’t hold through the uncertainty, he hopes his film can do what he can’t by forcing adults to act.

“You have to be able to ask tough questions, especially as a documentary,” he said. “There is a revolution happening. I’m more hopeful now. We have the ingredients for success.”

We can only hope. But for now, superman is going on holiday.

“I’m going to take a break and be a dad.”