Stuff for Dads

  The Simpsons Movie (DVD)

Starring: The usual voice actors, the usual characters, the usual selection of decent jokes, the usual observations on life and... a pig walking on the ceiling.

Rated: PG.

Story: Stop me if this sounds familiar, but Homer acts thoughtlessly and does something stupid and selfish. He dooms the entire town and alienates his wife and children. As a result, he must discover himself, save the day and win back the hearts of his family. This involves slapstick, idiocy, social commentary and doughnuts.

Comments: It's a while since I watched The Simpsons on TV. I overdosed on re-runs when Sprog1 was small because it's the perfect distraction while feeding a baby. At the end of each show, everything goes back the way it was to begin with and so it's possible to watch the episodes in almost any order without missing much. (Bart's been ten for nearly twenty years now!) Channel-hopping onto an episode was always a safe bet for some mild amusement and beat enduring endless repeats of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Then I got a bit bored with it and the advent of TiVo meant I had a wider selection of stuff to watch. The Simpsons slipped off my radar until I saw the amusing trailers for the movie. These made me want to see the film but, when the disc arrived through the post, I found myself reluctant to actually devote time to viewing it. I couldn't help thinking it was just going to be an extra-long episode.

When I finally got round to putting the movie in the DVD player, I was pleasantly surprised. It's witty, clever and has several laugh-out-loud sections. I had a strong urge to go buy some DVD box-sets of the TV series.

I only had opportunity to watch the first half of the movie before bedtime, though. I returned the next night, prepared for comic genius, and found myself watching the second half of an extra-long episode of The Simpsons. It wasn't awful, simply a little tired and predictable.

Maybe this disappointment at the last half an hour or so was down to altered expectations. Then again, maybe watching Homer mess up is funnier than watching him put things right, particularly when dragged out to feature length. (It didn't help, either, that the best bit of the finale is in the trailer.)

Nonetheless, the film is solidly fun throughout.

Of course, I'm assuming in all this that you haven't been living under a rock for a couple of decades and have seen an episode or two of The Simpsons at some point in your life. The movie assumes the same. The basic set up of the show is very simple - a dysfunctional American family struggles through one crisis after another, taking pot-shots at everything from politics to popular culture as they go. The horde of secondary characters, though, is vast and almost all of them make an appearance of some kind in the movie. This succession of cameos means the film is less accessible to newcomers than most normal episodes. If you have recently crawled out, blinking, into the harsh sunlight, sign up for cable and watch some re-runs first. (Oh, and by the way, this is the internet.)

As for everyone else, The Simpsons Movie is a cunning effort to extract some cash from fans and remind the rest of us that Homer, Bart and co. are still going. It's nothing special but it works - I still have that urge to go buy some box-sets.

Conclusion: It's The Simpsons... only longer.

Explosions: A couple.
Hilarious situations: Some.
Number of characters: Huge.
Familiarity: High.
Mr Burns: Not enough.
Spider Pigs: One.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: comedy, film review

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  In Bruges

Starring: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes & Fleur from Harry Potter.

Rated: 18.

Story: After a bungled job in London, two hitmen (Farrell & Gleeson) are sent to lie low for a while in Bruges. (It's in Belgium!) One of them hates the place, the other quite likes it. They sightsee, they go to the pub and they try not to get into trouble.

They get into trouble.

Their boss (Fiennes) turns up to sort things out. Violence ensues.

Comments: Yes, we went to the cinema and saw something that didn't involve cute, animated creatures or a boy wizard! We got to go straight in without having to apply for a second mortgage to buy some pick'n'mix or having to frog-march a posse of children to the toilet before the film started. It was fantastic! Then again, we did have to cough up full price for our tickets rather than the pound or two we normally pay for the kid's movie on a Saturday morning. The pick'n'mix might have been cheaper...

In Bruges is never going to be the Saturday morning kid's movie, however. It's full of swearing, gory death, drug use and talk of suicide. The characters are often racist, xenophobic and heightist. It's very funny in places but grim and distressing in others. I can't really see Pixar remaking it with rabbits.

I imagine the writer (Martin McDonagh) came up with the idea after a series of unfortunate events left him stranded in Bruges. Picture the scene: Doomed to several days of canal trips, Medieval churches and swans, he goes to the cinema and watches Mr & Mrs Smith to cheer himself up. This doesn't help. He has some beers. This does help... until he gets the bill and realises he's been ripped off. He decides to get even with Bruges and Hollywood in one fell swoop. He decides to write a film about hitmen that isn't all amoral action and excitement but explores the motivation and guilt... while poking fun at Belgium. Excellent.

The cast does a good job, managing to keep things going even in the few uncomfortable moments when the script shifts suddenly from witty banter to disturbing soul-searching. The whole film is bizarre and unlikely but if you've been to Bruges, you'll be too busy laughing and muttering, 'Hey! That's the bridge along from where we stayed!' to notice.

Since there are plenty of lovely shots of Bruges in the film but much of the humour comes from taking the rip out of the city, it's hard to know what the Belgian Tourist Board makes of it all. I think they may be gambling that if you haven't been to Bruges, you won't get the joke and will just think that it looks like a nice place to visit. They may be right.

Conclusion: Like a trip to Bruges with more laughs, added hitmen and less expense.

Explosions: None.
Political correctness: None.
Swing parks: One. (We went there; it's great.)
Swans: Loads. (We saw them; they didn't bite.)
Clock towers: One very tall one. (We didn't go up there; it was too much like effort.)
Cute, fluffy animated rabbits: None.

Rating: 4/5 if you've been to Bruges, else 3/5.

Labels: comedy, film review, thriller

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  Mr & Mrs Smith (DVD)

Starring: Brad Pitt & Angelina Jolie.

Rated: 15.

Story: Two professional assassins get married to each other without letting on about their careers. (Chortle.) After much lying (Ho, ho!), they both find out the truth. (Uh-oh.) They try and kill each other. (Oh no!) Then they try to kill everybody else. (Screech, slice, thakka-thakka-thakka, argh, BOOM!)

Comments: You can see why this got made - Brad & Angelina, plenty of action and a strong central gag. After all, there has to be plenty of comedy in a marriage where both partners are secretly hitmen, especially with a team of crack Hollywood scriptwriters working eagerly to tease it out...

Oh, apparently not.

The film only really gets going when the secret is revealed. It's then that the verbal sniping and the, er, actual sniping take off. Before that, there's just some sneaking about, lots of lying and a few limp jokes involving guns hidden in odd places. After the halfway point, however, sitcom starts to be usurped by action until the whole thing is enveloped in a hail of bullets of Shoot 'Em Up proportions. It's like some kind of ultimate date movie compromise - romantic comedy and Brad for her; guns and Angelina for him.

The action sequences are entertaining enough but they're slightly undone by the seeming invulnerability of the main characters. This is exacerbated by an unwise homage to the last scene of Butch Cassidy which misses the point. Even the massive final gunfight is slightly messed up by the deletion of a long segment that leaves a glaring continuity error. Ho hum.

Pitt and Jolie turn in their usual performances but to less effect than normal, since their characters aren't very sympathetic - they spend much of the movie being mean to each other and, whichever way you look at it, they're hitmen. Hitmen just aren't nice people.

Someone should probably have thought of that before giving this the go ahead.

Conclusion: Start watching it halfway through.

Explosions: Occasional.
Body count: Astronomical.
Angelina's legs: Long.
Brad Pitt: Slightly irritating.
Jokes: One (stretched to within an inch of its life and then given a good flogging to push it that last two and a half centimetres).

Rating: 3/5 if you're a fan of Brad and Angelina (else 2/5).

Labels: action, comedy, film review

  9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Money Train (DVD)

Starring: Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson & Jennifer Lopez.

Rated: 18.

Story: Snipes and Harrelson are brothers (don't ask) and work as undercover cops on the New York underground. Snipes is the sensible one and Harrelson is the crazy one. They both fancy their new co-worker (Lopez). It all leads, by way of endless 'witty' banter, to a heist of the train carrying the subway's takings.

Comments: Don't be fooled by the first five minutes. They give the impression that this might be entertaining but fail to prepare you for the hour or more of uneventful cop/love-triangle/bickering-brother cliches that follows. The last twenty-five minutes of train-based mayhem might be OK if you somehow manage to still care about any of the characters by that point, you don't mind that nothing makes sense and you haven't lost the will to live. Even then, it's all pretty daft and contrived.

Conclusion: A predictable buddy movie is genetically spliced with an idiotic action flick. The resulting monster has the charm of Snipes, the subtlety of Lopez and the butt of Harrelson. Discerning film-lovers hunt it down with pitchforks.

Explosions: None.
Believable characters: None.
Funny jokes: None.
Predictable but stupid plot developments: Plenty.

Rating: 1/5.

Labels: action, comedy, film review, quick

  9:30 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Severance (DVD)

Starring: Danny Dyer (who looks kind of familiar), Laura Harris (the new girl from The Faculty) and Tim McInnerny (the thick one from Blackadder).

Rated: 15

Story: A psycho gatecrashes a team-building weekend. Hilarity almost ensues.

Comments: This had potential but, as comedy slasher films go, it's neither that funny nor that scary. The characters are office comedy stereotypes - spineless manager, arrogant git, joking waster, unattainable female, frumpy female, officious sycophant and decent bloke - so it's difficult to take their peril seriously. Then again, having them squabble a lot and then die horribly isn't that funny.

Feels like some students' final year project.

Conclusion: A good idea that's spread too thin. Could do better.

Explosions: A couple.
Laughs: Occasional.
Scares: Few.
Stereotypes: Everyone.
Entertaining moments which aren't in the trailer: None.

Rating: 2/5.

Labels: comedy, film review, horror, quick

  9:01 AM - Permanent Link - 2 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Little Miss Sunshine (DVD)

Starring: No one much.

Rated: 15

Story: A severely dysfunctional American family go on a disastrous road trip in order to get their young daughter to the finals of a very dubious beauty pageant. They become slightly less dysfunctional. The pageant remains dubious.

Comments: Remember the old adage, 'Sticking a load of crazy people in a camper van doesn't always make a great comedy'? Well, it's true. Not only that, but if all the people are stereotypes, it apparently doesn't make for a great drama either.

Guest conclusion from my wife: 'Well that was kind of OK.'

Explosions: None.
Predictability: High.
Satirical targets: Too soft.
Actually funny moments: A handful.
Apparent message: Families are hell, but pre-teen beauty pageants are worse...

Rating: 2/5.

Labels: comedy, drama, film review, quick

  9:02 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Hot Fuzz (DVD)

Starring: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Timothy Dalton and a whole of host of other people from Bill Bailey to Edward Woodward who aren't in it much and seem to be there simply to get their name on the box.

Rated: 15

Story: Nick Angel (Pegg) is a successful police officer from London who is sent to a new post in a quiet country town. He struggles to come to terms with the laid-back way of life and policing. He gets to know his new partner Danny (Frost). They bond. They watch some action films together. There are some murders. Everything goes Die Hard.

Comments: I didn't find Shaun of the Dead that funny. It had an amusing concept and was relatively entertaining, but wasn't that funny. This is by the same team. Instead of a very British zombie film, it's a very British action film... eventually.

Most of the first two-thirds of the movie is an amiable fish-out-of-water comedy about a city cop on a rural beat. (Translation: Amiable means amusing, not critically-offensive, but not actually that funny). It's OK. Then it turns into an over-the-top homage to Hollywood action films. It could be seen as a parody but it's really less silly than Bad Boys or Miami Vice - the setting of an English market town just makes it obviously silly (and very funny).

The cast is mostly excellent. Timothy Dalton gives the impression of having fallen on hard times but Pegg comfortably manages to be a hard-nosed cop rather than a slightly wet geek for a change. Frost could probably play the comic side-kick in his sleep. Everyone else seems to be enjoying themselves. It would be interesting to know, however, why Steve Coogan and Bill Nighy turned up for their minute or so each. It feels like some kind of bet or the result of a drunken night out with Pegg and Frost. ("Want to be in our new film?" "Yeah, all right, if you can finish this bottle of tequila while standing on your head...")

Like Shaun, Hot Fuzz has a fantastic central idea but not enough supporting gags to sustain it for the entire length of the film. There will be a point half way through where you wonder what all the fuss is about. The build-up to the punchline is eventually worth it, though.

Conclusion: Not quite as slick and funny as it should be, and I have a strange desire to go shopping in Somerfield's...

Explosions: Two.
Great ideas: One.
Not so great ideas: A few.
Gags: Not enough.
Time taken to get going: An age.
Crazy English people: All of them.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: action, comedy, film review

  8:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Family Guy - Series 1 Volume 1 (DVD)

Starring: The disembodied voices of some Americans, plenty of excellent visual gags and one-liners and a bunch of rejected plots from The Simpsons.

Rated: 15

Story: This is an animated sitcom about the Griffin family - fat, oafish dad (Peter), hard-working, well-to-do mum (Lois), insecure teenage daughter (Meg), idiot teenage son (Chris), evil genius baby (Stewie) and their talking, Martini-drinking dog (Brian). They live in the suburbs in an obscure part of New England. Each episode is a separate scenario with no ongoing story. And, yes, it is a bit like The Simpsons.

Comments: This show is still in production despite having been cancelled twice. Having now watched a few of the early episodes, I can see both why it got canned but also why plenty of people bought the DVDs and brought about its resurrection. Family Guy has moments where it is hilarious but they leap out unexpectedly in the midst of something which is patently a wannabe of The Simpsons, except wackier and not as clever. Since there are already about a million episodes of The Simpsons, a knock-off isn't going to get anyone excited. It is funny, though. Basically, it's the kind of thing you wouldn't turn on specially but that's a real score if you're flicking channels while sitting up late with a grouchy baby.

The best bits are always the brief flash-back and 'what if' scenes that pop up frequently, introduced by lines such as, "I'm not so sure that's a good idea, remember the last time I did the laundry..." These provide nearly all the laugh-out-loud moments. (Some of the references are overly American, however, and some are out-of-date now).

In contrast, the actual story-lines affirming that lazy, idiot dads are really heroes can be tedious. We've seen it all before. Family Guy is far better when things revolve around Stewie's plans for world domination. With luck, later episodes feature more of Brian and Stewie while making the other characters a little more memorable.

That said, watching an episode of Family Guy is a better way to spend twenty minutes last thing at night than hunting around on Teletext for something interesting because you can't be bothered to go to bed. Just remember not to end up doing the Teletext thing as well... It's never pleasant waking up up on the sofa at half-seven in the morning with a small child sitting on your head playing Mario Kart.

Conclusion: I'll rent the second disc at some point but I'm in no great rush. It might even be better just going straight to season four and seeing if the show ever really finds its feet. If you're desperate for some American comedy, try My Name is Earl first - it's consistently funnier and more interesting. Or you could just set your Sky+ box to record repeats of The Simpsons. That will keep you busy for awhile.

Explosions: Occasional.
Jokes about President Clinton: Some.
Brilliant comic characters: Two.
Generic comic characters: The rest.
Similarity to The Simpsons: Obvious.
Chances of a Family Guy fanboy slagging me for daring to suggest any similarity to The Simpsons whatsoever: High.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: comedy, film review

  9:57 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post

  Night at the Museum (DVD)

Starring: Ben Stiller, Carla Gugino (the parole officer in Sin City), Dick Van Dyke, Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan, Robin Williams, Ricky Gervais, Audrey from 24, huge amounts of CGI and a monkey.

Rated: PG

Story: Larry (Stiller) needs a steady job to impress his son and placate his ex-wife. All he can get is a night guard post at the Museum of Natural History. To his surprise, however, all the exhibits come alive at night and he has to keep the peace while making sure he doesn't get eaten. Some mildly amusing situations ensue...

Comments: I feel some condemnation with faint praise coming on. How about:

I managed to persuade the boys to watch this at teatime one day and it was a lot more enjoyable than the old Pokemon episodes they really wanted.

Yes, I think that covers it.

The first twenty minutes or so of scene-setting and character development are pretty superfluous. This film is really all about walking museum exhibits causing chaos and it doesn't get going until Larry starts his first shift. After that there's a decent mix of the kind of action and humour that fills TV schedules on bank holiday afternoons. The special effects are excellent but, then again, we expect nothing less these days.

The cast is full of famous faces padding out their CVs with a family film. Stiller puts in a commendable amount of effort but just is slightly irritating. Gugino does her best in an extremely generic love-interest role. Dick Van Dyke is simply glad to have some work. Coogan and Gervais are as annoying as always. Robin Williams is now made of schmaltz. The monkey out-acts most of them.

Not that the kids cared - they really enjoyed it. Sproglette needed some cuddles to see her through some of the more 'perilous' moments, though.

Conclusion: A decent film for children of primary school age but not a classic.

Explosions: Tiny.
Dinosaurs: Skeletal.
Plot: Slim.
Technical wizardry: Plenty.
Pokemon: None.

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: comedy, family, film review

  9:00 AM - Permanent Link - 0 comments - Post comment - Links to this post