Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Judd Apatow has been hailed as the saviour of comedy. It's easy to see why. He seemed to have cracked it. The box office figures would agree. His producing template is simple. Get a talented troupe of comedic actors and directors together, including himself. Generate the material from within that group allowing the talent to try their hand at writing, directing, producing and whatever you're having yourself. Ensure that the material is foul-mouthed and crude to appeal to the guys and has a strong romantic element to appeal to the girls. Ensure it has genuine characters and arcs to make people care (if they're so inclined). Lastly, let the talent loose by allowing them to improvise and come up with stuff that is too random and inspired to ever be dreamed up by a scriptwriter sitting in front of a laptop, thus making it all feel like a party that the audience is let in on.

Unfortunately there have been dark clouds gathering. His saturation of the marketplace after his initial success (possibly the studios fault for giving him the keys to the city and unloading his waste on the public) has lead to diminishing returns at the box office. Drillbit Taylor was a recent notable failure. Forgetting Sarah Marshall was a slightly safer bet, sailing closely as it does to Knocked Up. Written by the goofy self-effacing everyman star that we can all root for, playing opposite a highly attractive female lead who is more famous for her TV roles, an enticing blend of improvised Apatow sweet and sour from a selection of his usual troupe. A simple low-concept premise: Man gets dumped, goes on holidays to get away from it all, his ex his there with her new rock star boyfriend and he can't avoid them. It should work. And it does. Though it never quite reaches the heights of Superbad or Knocked Up.

Segal is endearing and funny at times but can't quite match Seth Rogen in these stakes. The movie unfolds predictably but it doesn't matter when there are enough laughs along the way. Russell Brand delivers a lot of these, essentially playing himself and, as in real life, initially seeming like a prat but actually turning out to be likable. Mila Kunis holds her own as the new love interest but her character is pretty thin and falls annoyingly into a new cliched character-category - the quirky girl who 'understands' the lead and whose passion for life helps the protagonist over a recent trauma. See Garden State and the awful Elizabethtown . Some of the supporting cast seem to be on auto pilot or a little miscast. Jonah Hill is still effortlessly funny though.

There's enough in here to make this a DVD that will be brought around by a comforting friend with a tub of ice-cream after a break-up in years to come (again, if you're so inclined) But it still seems a little further down the graph as Apatow's stock slowly falls. Maybe the upcoming Pineapple Express can buck the trend and make the graph U-shaped again.

3/5

Street Kings

Street Kings, based on a story by James LA Confidential Ellroy, tells the story of detective Tom Ludlow (Reeves) a veteran LAPD cop who is willing to break the law in order to bring down the bad guys. His methods bring him into conflict with his former partner detective Washington (Crews) and internal affairs captain Biggs (Laurie). Though with the support of his boss captain Wander (Whitaker) and other cops Ludlow always manages to come out clean. When Detective Washington, who was talking to internal affairs about Ludlow, ends up dead Ludlow vows to track down the killers even if it means implicating himself.

Looking at the cast, the plot, the director and the writers of Street Kings you would think you where on to a winner. You would be wrong. The only thing Street Kings succeeds in doing is proving that it takes more than the right ingredients to make a good film.

With his first and only other film as director, Harsh Times, Ayer gave us an excellent study of a gulf war veteran unable to fit in after returning to LA after a tour of duty. To say Street Kings is not as good would be an understatement. The story is convoluted and yet the ending is obvious ten minutes into the film, the characters are clichés and the dialogue tries far too hard to be cool.

Keanu has given us some great films over the years but the poverty of this material shows up his limitations as an actor. Neither Forest Whitaker nor Hugh Laurie offers any salvation. Indeed there are some memorably bad performances. If there is a silver lining here it is some decent action scenes and a good supporting performance by Chris Evans.

Rather than going to see Street Kings, go rent LA Confidential or NARC.

2/5

Leatherheads

George Clooney’s third directorial effort sees him tackling the difficult genre of the screwball comedy. A genre which is defined by the use of sharp, witty dialogue and with strong romantic leads by films like ‘Bringing Up Baby’, ‘Adam’s Rib’ and in more recent times ‘The Hudsucker Proxy’.

Set in 1925, Leatherheads sees Clooney play ‘Dodge Connelly’, manager and player of a struggling professional football team. Facing financial ruin, Dodge concocts a scheme to lure ‘All-Star’ college footballer and War hero Carter Rutherford (John Krasinski) to the team in an effort to boost ticket sales and save the day. Enter Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger), a feisty reporter with her eye on the assistant editor’s desk; which, she’ll bag if she gets the story that will shatter the tale which made Carter an American golden child. All sounds pretty screwbally so far, doesn’t it?

So, Leatherheads should work, all the parts are there; screwball comedy set against the backdrop of the birth of professional football where the rule book hasn’t been written and dirty tactics are par for the course. Also, Clooney has had some experience with the Coen Brothers who know a thing or two about this flavour of film. For all intensive purposes, this film should at the very least have us giggling from beginning to end. It doesn’t.

The film makes too many wrong decisions. First the script, all that witty, snappy dialogue that should be there, isn’t. And when it is there, it’s forced. The ‘wacky’ football team which is set up from the beginning and should the gold mine of fun and frolics is simply thrown to one side to focus on the lesser and underdeveloped love triangle between our three leads.

A staple in the genre of the ‘Screwball Comedy’ is the feisty leading lady. Her presence and machine gun delivery of dialogue will set the tone and pace to all of her scenes. Not here, Zellweger seems laboured in a role that isn’t freshly realized leaving her to act via squint.

Leatherheads is mostly one big missed opportunity. Apart from minor laughs from the football team, there is little to recommend about this film. Instead get your hands on ‘The Hudsucker Proxy’ for a proper contemporary stab at the screwball comedy genre. Then for to get your fix of some reckless sporting team antic watch ‘Slap Shot’ where Paul Newman tries to manage violent but hilarious ice hockey team.

This doesn’t mean we don’t like George, we do. Let’s just hope that his next directing effort (which should be the Coen Brother’s script ‘Suburbicon’) will be better.

2/5 (for effort)

21

Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess) needs either 300000 dollars or a "real life experience" in order to reach his dream, a scholarship in Harvard medical school. Problem: he's a bit of a dork, and a broke one on top of that. However, being a maths genius he's soon spotted by one of his professors (Kevin Spacey) who includes him in a group of gifted students he takes every week-end to Vegas. There they use a method based on pure statistics to beat the casinos and "live the life".
All in all 21 isn't a bad movie. It's correctly shot, especially the scenes in Las Vegas with slick, fast paced camera moves that keep you interested. You don't need to be a math genius yourself to understand what's going on and that's probably a good thing for most of us !
It is quite obvious this movie targets teenagers or young people up to 20-22 years old. I'm not saying this in a demeaning way but be aware that anyone older will have seen it all at least a hundred times already. And we're touching here the major issue : the story is highly predictable. Now I know what you're gonna say. This is based on a true story and anyway which movie isn't predictable these days ? And that's a valid point; but in all fairness this one is right up there for you'll almost be able to picture every single scene and twist in your mind long before they're shown on the screen and this up to the very end. If you're not overly attracted by the subject, you might get bored after a while.

Surprisingly enough, the major disappointment amongst the actors was Kevin Spacey who tends to overact. He doesn't look very comfortable in not having the main part and seems to be on a mission : giving the audience as much "Spacey" as he can in his limited screen time. Not a good performance by his very high standards. Same result with Lawrence Fishburne as the angry casino boss. Kate Bosworth's character (Jill Taylor) is clearly a "stand there and be pretty" type of character, so she didn't have to do much. Young Sturgess however is doing quite OK and has a real "nice dude" touch going on. We'll see him again.

Not bad but not great, 21 is the kind of easy movie that doesn't require to be seen in the cinema unless you're really into the whole "Vegas effect". My advice if it's not the case: wait for the DVD. Deserves better than a 2 but is definitely not a 3 so...

2.5/5

Son of Rambow

Son of Rambow is the tale of child odd couple (Will and Lee) and their attempts to create a short film to enter a national youth film competition ‘Screen Test’. Using just a borrowed camera from Lee’s bullying brother and Will’s sparkling creativity inspired from watching a bootlegged version of ‘First Blood’ they set out to create their own spin off from the first Rambo film.

Son of Rambow is a witty and well observed but never sentimental piece of British cinema. The two leads, Bill Milner and Will Poulter, give performances that director Gareth Jenning’s should be proud who is directing his second feature film, the first being the enjoyable ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’.

Despite a forced subplot centring on a French foreign exchange student and a dodgy climax, the script still dances on the verge of a very deep lake of emotion. The story’s heart is strongest when Will escapes to his fantasy world and when observing his mother’s internal battle between religious duty and the charge of being a mother. Jessica Stephenson (you’ll remember her from ‘Spaced’) gives a touching performance as Will’s conflicted mother.

With news of Prom Night’s domination of the US box office this weekend it’s good to know that there is still at least one film charming and pure enough to actually warrant our hard earned cash. Son of Rambow is far from the best film of the year, but it has bloody heart.

3/5

10000 BC

That's it. Once again they got me. Once again I opted for the easy solution, the one that was gonna leave my brain in standby for a while. Once again I trusted a blockbuster to entertain me a minimum with decent special effects and good action packed sequences. And once again I lost my time.

Roland Emmerich could be described as Michael Bay's evil (eviler ? ) twin. However when Bay seems to be getting better at what he does - Ah come on ! Transformers is definitely more enjoyable than Armageddon !- Emmerich seems to go the opposite direction and his "quality" standards are dropping dramatically as his career goes on. Already the quite ridiculous CG wolves in "The day after tomorrow" should have been enough to make me think twice before watching 10000 BC. What can I say... We all make mistakes. But let's scratch the wound open.

Question : Is it really too much to ask for a half decent storyline these days ? You know, not a "life changing experience" type of storyline but just something that kinda holds together and makes sense to a certain extent. Well, apparently it is too much to ask. I had decided not to talk about the plot in my review but in all fairness it's not going to take long :
The good guys (you know they're good because they're good looking and they speak) are attacked by the bad guys (you know they're bad because they're fierce ugly and they grunt) who kidnap the hero's very cute girlfriend, and, doing so, start a chase across jungle, desert, mountains and more or less any kind of landscape you can wander in. And...well... that's about it really. That in itself wouldn't be too much harm if the story was cleverly put together. It's definitely not the case. We're jumping from one scene to another without any kind of link or sense which completely ruins the "epic factor" that should have been there.
Also I know this wasn't supposed to be the History channel stuff but come on ! They used mammoth pets to build the pyramids ?! Seriously lads...

Surely the action scenes and the special effects were gonna save the day! No, the main problem being that everything looks awful cheap. The mammoths look a bit too "cartoony", so does the sabertooth tiger. Apocalypto (clearly the source of inspiration for this movie) was written in mayan language which brought a wee touch of realism to the whole thing, here they just gave a vague eastern-european accent to the characters, don't ask me why.... Even the main bad guy seems to be wearing several layers of clothes to make him look bigger... Pathetic.

I'm not gonna say anything about the actors because to be fair they had no material whatsoever to work with, the dialogue being nothing short of dreadful. I just wish them good luck for the future. They're probably worth better than this.

In recent years a few movies such as Sin City, Kill Bill, 300 (oh man, that was cool!) and even Apocalypto or Transformers proved that you can put up a good show even without a strong story. For each of these the whole storyline could be written on a stamp but it didn't really matter; in the end these films were visually cool and highly entertaining. 10000 BC isn't... by any standards. To avoid like the plague.

1/5 only because I'm in a good mood