Semi-Pro

When approaching this kind of comedy, you have to turn a blind eye to the litany of one-star reviews that tend to befall such works and Ferrell's latest opus Semi-Pro is no exception – one stars all the way. Sometimes the common critic expects too much, such as a ‘story’ or ‘characters’, whereas all anyone who goes to these flicks wants is to laugh. So, confident that everyone else is wrong and that laughs will be had in some fashion, I proceed.

Everything about this movie spoke to me - it's set in the 70s (great music, hilarious clothes, shiny women); it's about basketball (one of the most cinema-friendly of all sports, witness White Men Can't Jump and...others I can’t think of now. Teen Wolf! So money); and it's got proven comic talent involved with Will Arnett and Woody Harrelson. Yes. I will like this film. This cannot fail.

90 minutes later and it did not so much fail as suck so spectacularly I was staggering around blind outside the cinema - my face was hoovered off my head and stolen by this unfiltered slice of ass.

Damn it was bad. Evidence - I saw it in a suburban cinema that was 70% full of tracksuited college larries who no doubt worship at the moustache of Ron Burgundy or the belly of Frank the Tank. Barely a chuckle all the way through - bar the forced giggle of the guy in the group who insisted they go to witness this jive. That's bad.

That's akin to Ronaldo - or whoever you prefer - not scoring in a footy game of eight-year-old girls. A goal, I mean. Perfect conditions, supplicant audience and still it doesn't work. That's bad.

I like Will Ferrell. He has made me laugh a lot. His movies have a simple formula. They hone in on a scenario that's rife for comedy, dream up a larger-than-life character, slap on some perfunctory rivalry-based storyline and then they roll the cameras on him, hoping he pulls something out of the bag.

More often than not it works. Of late it seems sports are his thing: ice-skating and NASCAR were his last two playgrounds. The more ludicrous the better. It also helps a lot when he's surrounded with other comic talent to bounce off.

Perhaps – purely by chance, I assure you – I have stumbled across the problem with this rhubarb. Basketball may be too mainstream a sport to yield comedy gold - even rubbish 70s basketball does not carry the same in-built laugh factor as male figure skating.

Also, the surrounding talent on show here is well below par - Woody is lumped with the straight man role, forgotten sports hero struggling to cling to past glories, etc; Will Arnett as a commentator has very little to do, none of it funny; while the rest of the team are simple stereotypes used for one gag, if even for that. The foreign guy who doesn't speak English and…that's it. There's a guy who is religious, I think. I genuinely can't remember anything to distinguish the rest of the cast. That's bad.

The real hassle with this pungent fart of a film is the awful, awful laziness. It looks as if it was put together in a couple of days. Short days. Like Fair City, if everyone blurts their lines out in one go and no one walks into anything - it's in the can. Next shot. After each scene ends, there's a palpable feeling of 'is that it?'

Nowhere near enough effort has gone into writing, improvising something funny here. There is either a rampant over-estimation of how funny these guys think they are, or a callous lack of consideration for their audience – churn it out, bag the opening weekend scratch and run.

Director Kent Alterman - you fucked up. In his first shot in the chair after a brief career as executive producer, Kent has not set the screen alight. I remember a while back there was a flick called Paparazzi or something of that nature which Mel Gibson's hairdresser directed. The shaved pubes on the floor of that guy’s exclusive parlour would have done a better job here.

Utterly uninspired all the way through, the dispiritingly disconnected early scenes lurch over to stock sports movie clichés. Slo-mo? Check. Team striding out to meet their destiny? Check. Last-minute heroics? Check. Here we have the cinematic equivalent of a very, very simple paint-by-numbers page.

Don't get me wrong – I love sports movies and I will happily watch the underdogs come good all day long if it's put together well and if I care about the team. Even bad sports films can get me going. And recent film history is littered with really appalling attempts at splicing sports and comedy. It is in that bin that Semi-Pro is going to end up. As a comedy, it’s woeful. But compared to the likes of Major League, Caddyshack and even tripe like Mr. Baseball, Semi-Pro is straight up pants.

If you want to laugh at American sports in the 70s, go watch Paul Newman in Slap Shot. Hilarious clothes, funny peripheral characters, moderately effective romantic subplot, great action. Everything this film shoots for and misses by a country mile.

In basketball parlance, this is a brick. In fact, this film shoots up so many bricks, they should gather them all up and build a shelter for the homeless – from White Men Can't Jump. A far, far superior basketball comedy. Watch that again. Anything but this.

But I suspect if you like Will Ferrell, you’ll do what I did – ignore this one star review and go anyway, hoping for the best, thinking I’ve got it wrong as well. I haven’t. It’s punishingly bad.

1/5

The Accidental Husband

Whatever possessed Uma Thurman to act and PRODUCE this film is beyond me. Seeing her in this soulless, cold bit of product makes me wince and reminisce for a Uma in a Tarantino film.

How anybody saw this film through is a mystery. Take the set up, a stuck up radio talk show host, lets call her 'Uma', presents a popular chat program centred around putting sense into love. Lets not forget she's about to get married to a sensible British chap, we’ll call him 'Colin Firth'. In one of her routine calls she convinces a nervous bride-to-be to pull out of her wedding to unpredictable, childish, fun loving, fire-fighter fiancé, lets call him ‘Mumbles and Grumbles’.

Due to Uma’s interference, Mumbles is dumped and has his heart broken. Uma then becomes his object of annoyance, not hatred, hatred would have been interesting. And with the help of the child computer wiz downstairs (whose window ‘Mumbles and Grumbles’ climbs through whenever he takes the fancy?!) he electronically marries Uma. This puts a spanner in the works of Uma’s marriage to Colin Firth. So Uma tracks down Mumbles and Grumbles to get him to sign the annulment papers… I’ll stop there.

Imagine for a moment how the story pans out. Are you thinking of various hilarious situations leading to a bubbling yet unstoppable attraction between our opposites? Even a little bit of a tear jerker as our leading lady is forced to choose between her head and her heart? Stop. Well done, you just thought of a better film that what the rest of this pile has to offer. Even if you thought of nothing at all, it is bloody Shakespeare compared to the rest of this rubbish.

‘The Accidential Husband’ is in every possible way bad. Everything was wrong: wrong script, wrong casting, wrong acting, wrong directing, wrong choice of music; even the God dam it projectionist was wrong, forgetting to put on the gate thingy so the boom mic was bouncing in and out of every other shot.

The three credited female writers seem to be rookies, and trust me I’m all for rookies but it doesn’t take a seasoned veteran to see that everything in this film is forced and contrived. The actors are left without a leg to stand on having to inject some sort of life into these un-likeable, unrealistic characters.

The direction, by Griffen Dunne, is completely misjudged. Thurman overplays her part and Jeffery Dean Morgan both underplays and overplays in different scenes. Poor old Colin Firth seems to have resigned himself to ‘Rom-Com’ hell. It’s a check I suppose.

Although director Dunne has not had the best track record in the field, his ‘highlight’ being the 1998 Nicole Kidman, Sandra Bullock stinker, Practical Magic; he has however had one film golden moment, you may remember him as the lead in Scoresse’s wonderful ‘After Hours’.

To wrap up I believe that I was not the only person in the cinema who didn’t like this film. I don't intend to be cruel, but there was a mentally disabled girl in front of me who started shaking her head in disgust halfway through. I'm not joking.

Not even 1/5

In Bruges

This may be Martin McDonagh’s first feature but strangely, many people will know exactly what to expect from it. McDonagh’s unique blend of jet-black comedy, high drama, graphic violence and stagey kitch has seen him emerge as one of the most singular voices in modern theatre. His plays have the pedigree and awards to prove it. He even has an Oscar to his name for the short film Six Shooter.

The problem is, if you’re a McDonagh virgin, this film will be a little like your first time. Not quite how you pictured it, a little confusing and unsettling, you might feel a little guilty but damn straight you wanna do it again. Certainly, In Bruges confounds expectations. On the surface it appears to be a guns and gangsters caper telling the story of two hitmen (Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson) who retreat to Bruges to hide out after a hit goes wrong. They are pursued by Ralph Fiennes in full blown cockney mode. Indeed as the trailer promises, all manner of calamitous capery inevitably ensues. But, those who know McDonagh’s work will know to expect more.

Rather than lapsing into a sub Guy Ritchie comic strip (insert obligatory reference to Tarantino concerning any film with guns and sharp dialogue) the film sets the characters up as real, living, breathing people and lets them lead the plot to places one wouldn’t expect. Places where their decisions matter on a personal level rather than merely serving the plot machinations. Rarely has such broad comedy sat so closely along side such genuine dramatic tension and tragedy.

It’s this unsettling and innovative tonal mix that may divide audiences however. McDonagh’s plays have always succeeded in appropriating cliched, stage Irishness and its associated broad comedy and caricature, whilst blending it with drama, violence and pathos. Perhaps the subtleties of cinematic tone present more of a challenge. To his credit, McDonagh aims high, attempting a tone that is almost unique and for the most part he succeeds admirably. The damp, dreary cinematography, the consistent dwelling on the medieval and gothic architecture, the ominously haunting score from Coens regular Carter Burwell all bare the mark of a master filmmaker. That all this sits beside broad, sometimes puerile and often deliberately offensive comedy is undeniably unusual and mostly impressive. Its not for the feint of heart or the feint of taste, but that’s the whole point.

At every juncture, the film is asking the audience moral questions, not least what they are willing to accept and forgive from a person and from a joke. Thus the blackest of the comedy feels consistent to the themes rather than being contrived for shock value – though many will see it as such. Yes, the mix jars at times. Yes, Colin Farrell speaking with Colin Farrell’s voice and accent for what seems like the first time – and all the associations we attribute to it – struggles to navigate the tonal shifts occasionally. Yes the ball is dropped now and again. Yes it lapses into the self-indulgence of a debut film on at least one occasion, but this is a hugely ambitious and auspicious debut that has more big ideas and moral ambiguity than any film with a gun, a gangster and a geezer has any right to.

Any fan of cinema has to welcome a filmmaker who can mix jokes about fat Americans, midgets and Tottenham Hotspur with a dark, morally ambiguous drama. Pop your cherry.

4/5