Stuff for Dads

  Tropic Thunder (DVD)

Starring: Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr, Jack Black, Matthew McConaughey & Tom Cruise.

Rated: 15.

Story: The filming of an action movie based on a 'true' story from the the Vietnam War goes totally pear-shaped. As a result, the director decides to go for a Blair Witch approach and a bunch of pampered Hollywood actors find themselves wandering the jungles of South East Asia dressed as GIs and waving fake guns.

Unsurprisingly, they blunder into a load of locals with real guns...

Comments: A touch of humour can do wonders for a trashy action film. Some proper jokes and a sense of fun are an effective means of papering over the holes in the plot and easing the transition between daft excuses for explosions. Tropic Thunder proves, however, that a touch of action can also do wonders for a trashy comedy film.

The jokes are generally reasonably funny with a handful of truly hilarious moments poking fun at the movie industry. A couple of recurring gags are a little tiresome, though. (It's particularly hard to tell whether we're supposed to be laughing at the idiocy of Tom Cruise's character or simply at Tom Cruise. In some ways, that's incredibly clever. Sadly, it's pretty excruciating to watch.) As a standard comedy, the film would be OK but instantly forgettable. Happily, the action scenes are more entertaining than in a fair few action movies I've seen recently, picking up the slack whenever the humour starts to wear thin. The final product is both fun and exciting.

Ultimately, your reaction to Tropic Thunder is likely to depend on how you feel about Robert Downey Jr's character. His performance carries the movie in places and so you'll need to be able to see the funny side of a white dude playing a white dude playing a black dude who acts like a stereotype of a black dude invented by a white dude who has lost sight of the dude he really is...

(Oh, and the best bit is actually the spoof viral-video planning meeting that's in the bonus features.)

Conclusion: All comedy films should have more explosions. Maybe even My Best Friend's Wedding could have been good with a couple of air strikes and a truck full of AK-47s.

Explosions: Loads.
Funny jokes: Enough.
Very confused dudes: Two.
Life-saving uses of a TiVo: One.
Tom Cruise embarrassing himself: Slightly too much.

Rating: 4/5.

Labels: action, comedy, film review

 
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  Burn After Reading (DVD)

Starring: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Frances McDormand, Tilda Swinton and an absolutely vast amount of swearing.

Rated: 15.

Story: Er... I suppose there was a story somewhere. Let me think... Oh, yeah... A group of people in Washington DC go through mid-life crises over their work, appearance, marriages and/or sex lives. Through a series of affairs and a misplaced CIA disk, their lives become intertwined. Everything gets seriously out of hand.

Comments: At what point does open-ended become inconclusive? When does multi-stranded simply cross-over into disjointed? Where is the line between art and chaos?

Call me a scientist, but I like a story to have a beginning, a middle and an end. Usually in that order. A story should make its way cleverly and amusingly from somewhere to somewhere else with a couple of unexpected turns in between.

There are other people who think a story should be all about the characters - going nowhere is fine as long as that is consistent with the relationships and inner turmoil being portrayed. The point can be that there is no point. As one of the characters in Burn After Reading so aptly puts it near the end, 'What have we learnt? Not to do this again.'

Yep, if you like a good plot, then this isn't a film for you. Burn After Reading is quite simply a story about some crazy people, some of whom have guns. Brad Pitt's character is easily the most likable because he is an idiot, not just being one. There's less story than in No Country for Old Men, and what is there is held together by a huge coincidence.

That said, the bizarreness of it all does produce some genuinely funny moments and the star cast does a good job. The film is always interesting to watch if seldom out-and-out entertaining. Maybe it's open-ended, multi-stranded art.

Or maybe not...

Conclusion: One of those films that was clearly more fun to make than it is to watch.

Explosions: None.
Body count: Higher than you might expect.
Best bit: Brad Pitt's hair.
Suitable for viewing with your gran, kids or church youth group?: I wouldn't advise it.
Lesson: Impending middle age leads to madness (and incoherent movies).

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: comedy, drama, film review

 
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  Be Kind Rewind (DVD)

Starring: Jack Black, Danny Glover, Mos Def (Ford Prefect from Hitchhiker's Guide) & Melonie Diaz (who's been in lots of worthy sounding films that I've never heard of. This should maybe have been a clue...)

Rated: 12.

Story: A nutty conspiracy theorist (Black) magnetises himself in a hugely unlikely fashion and wipes all the VHS tapes in the video store where his friend (Mos Def) helps out. In a panic, they remake the movies themselves using whatever props they can cobble together. Gradually they rope in the rest of the community to help out.

Comments: I haven't been so shamelessly and blatantly mis-sold a movie since Bridge to Terabithia. The trailer concentrates on the DIY films, featuring amusing clips of homemade versions of Ghostbusters and Robocop and Rush Hour 2. It makes Be Kind Rewind look like a manic comedy poking fun at Hollywood blockbusters.

The film is actually more of a drama than a comedy, and off-the-wall rather than funny i.e. it's totally daft and occasionally dull. Most of the plot revolves around the main characters' attempts to save a video store that is insolvent, falling down and almost devoid of stock (even before the bonkers 'magnetic man' incident). Yeah, it's nice when everyone starts working together and they discover their creative talents, but you can't help feeling there must be a better goal they could aim for. Does anyone really want to rent Ghostbusters on VHS?

The homemade movie clips are pretty few and far between. They're easily the best bit of the film but you'll have seen the highlights in the trailer. I'm guessing you could turn up stuff that's even better with a quick trip to YouTube. These clips would have the added advantage of not featuring Jack Black.

I can't remember Mos Def's performance in The Hitchhiker's Guide. I suspect I won't remember his performance in this by the end of the week. Danny Glover is as entertaining to watch as usual, though.

It's all just a bit of a mess really. Be Kind Rewind doesn't know what it wants to be or why. In fairness, it's never awful but, then again, it's seldom particularly good either. While my wife and I were halfway through watching, our AV-switcher had a spasm and lost the signal from the DVD player. We were dumped into the middle of The Matador, starring Pierce Brosnan, which was on TV and neither of us had seen. Probably the biggest indictment of Be Kind Rewind's confused nature is that it was over five minutes before we realised this was what had happened...

Conclusion: Wait until someone does a homemade remake and posts it on the internet. Watch that instead.

Explosions: One.
Improbable events: Plenty.
Creative use of tinsel and double-sided sticky tape: Excellent.
Villains: Developers, lawyers, DVDs and a cat.
Unlikely discoveries: Inserting random sections of other movies into this one actually improves it.

Rating: 2/5.

Labels: comedy, drama, film review (vol.5)

 
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  Black Sheep (DVD)

Starring: A load of psycho sheep.

Rated: 15.

Story: A genetic experiment goes wrong and the flocks of a remote New Zealand farm turn nasty.

Comments: This really shouldn't work. It should be one joke stretched to breaking point. Killer sheep! Ho, ho! ... Bored now... Happily, the script keeps up a decent stream of gags and doesn't plump for the standard slasher scenario of a large group of idiots getting picked off one by one.

There are some unnecessarily gory scenes near the end that are maybe meant as parody but come across as gross. They'd be more worthwhile if the film was in the least bit scary. Bear in mind that I found I am Legend scary. This just isn't.

Then again, I'm glad I'm not going on a camping trip in Wales any time soon.

Conclusion: It's hard to imagine a movie about killer sheep that's better than this. (You know what I'm saying...)

Explosions: One large one (full of sheep).
Fields: Lots (also full of sheep).
Deep, dark pits: One (full of bits of sheep).
Haggis: One (probably full of bits of sheep, but it's kind of hard to tell.)
Unconvincing monsters: Hundreds. (They look a bit like sheep but are really full of stuffing and cheap animatronics).

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: comedy, film review (vol.5), horror, quick

 
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  Pixar's WALL-E

Starring: Pixar's usual fantastic animation and artwork... and very few words.

Rated: U.

Story: The Earth has been made uninhabitable thanks to a build up of toxic rubbish and humanity has headed to the stars. After centuries, only one of the robots left behind to clear up remains operational - WALL-E. He has a pet cockroach and longs for love (not with the cockroach, I hasten to add).

Then, one day, a probe arrives from space containing the robot of his dreams...

Comments: You have to give Pixar credit for pushing boundaries. While other studios have been playing catch-up with the quality of their animation and scripts, Pixar have moved on to making movies with feeling and depth and meaning. There are no overweight pandas falling down stairs in comic fashion here. The first half hour has almost no verbal dialogue. Pathos is created through emotive movement, sweeping vistas and archetypal imagery. Great effort is extended in making us care for an abandoned robot on a desolate world and to empathise with his faltering attempts to find companionship. It...

Oh, goodness, I was bored. You know, like that bit halfway through Cars where the pace turns to treacle and you just want something (anything!) to happen. After twenty minutes of WALL-E I was seriously worried whether I could last another hour or so of a lonely robot wandering brown landscapes.

Fortunately, the film picks up. WALL-E and his girlfriend reach an interstellar cruise-liner full of obese people and chaos ensues. Everyone falls over a lot. Stuff happens.

It's pretty predictable stuff, though, and there's still not much dialogue. There are a couple of messages - one ecological and another about avoiding dependency on technology - but they're so incredibly broad and obvious that the lesson which actually sticks in the mind is to not become so fat that you can't roll over.

All this puts rather a lot of pressure on the slender and unlikely plot. The story centres around a small plant that WALL-E finds on Earth. It's the first sign that the planet is habitable again.

One plant.

Exactly how toxic would things have to get for every weed on Earth to die? My back yard is entirely slabbed over and gets occasionally sprayed with herbicide - nevertheless, it's got all manner of flora sprouting from it. If I leave it the entire summer, I have to cut a path through with a machete and keep an eye out for overweight pandas.

Fighting over a single plant feels very contrived.

There are several further believability issues but it would be picky to mention them. Any other animated film could get away with these things. Maybe I was put in an unreceptive mood by the unexpectedly slow start. Perhaps, though, in making a world that looks real, Pixar made me expect more realism in the events.

The rest of my family certainly enjoyed the film much more than I did. The boys couldn't decide whether they liked this or Prince Caspian best. Personally, my favourite bit was the short film which came on first called Presto which involves a magician having a slapstick altercation with his hungry rabbit. It was crammed with more action and ideas than the feature.

Conclusion: If the kids want to watch this every day for a month when it comes out on DVD, at least the lack of speech will make it easy for me to ignore.

Explosions: Occasional and small.
Dialogue: Occasional and brief.
Artistic moments: Frequent and slightly too long.
Overweight pandas falling down the stairs: None.
Overweight humans rolling down a hill: Not enough...

Rating: 3/5.

Labels: comedy, family, film review (vol.5), sci-fi

 
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  Kung Fu Panda

Starring: Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie, Lucy Liu, Jackie Chan, etc, etc.

(They all do fine but you won't recognise half of them until the credits. It's like the makers rounded up every famous name they could, in an effort to maximise their Google hits. Was it really necessary?)

Rated: PG.

Story: It's the classic tale of an over-weight panda overcoming adversity to learn Kung Fu in an attempt to save his village from an evil snow leopard and discover his inner butt-kicking Dragon Warrior.

Comments: Contrary to expectations, this isn't awful or full of fart gags. Admittedly, most of the laughs stem from a fat panda falling over but, in a sea of indistinguishable computer-animated movies, sometimes you have to find amusement where you can...

Kung Fu Panda is actually one of the better CGI films I've seen in a while. It's fast-paced and avoids the dull over-indulgence of efforts like Cars and Ratatouille. More than that, it takes advantage of the whole animated, cuddly animal concept. It features a host of outlandish and physically impossible feats and fights. Done with human beings (animated or otherwise) it would look stupid but because it's all snakes and tigers and, er, pandas, suspension of disbelief is much easier. It's possible to sit back and enjoy the spectacle without sniggering at the daftness.

The only real disappointment is the somewhat confused message. It appears to be, 'You don't need to be special to be special.' Except the story is all about a panda who can learn Kung Fu in an afternoon - that's pretty special whatever way you look at it. Meanwhile, the characters who've put the effort in and trained all their lives to make themselves special get smacked into the dirt. Eh?

Ho well, the plot moves along quickly enough to plaster over the cracks. For a movie you feel probably stemmed from a title brain-storming session, it's pretty entertaining.

Writer 1: Dare-devil Dinosaur?
Producer: Too generic.
Writer 2: Rodeo Ostrich?
Producer: Too niche.
Writer 1: Karate Kid?
Producer: Been done.
Writer 2: Not with goats.
Producer: Forget it.
Writer 1: Parachute Elephant?
Producer: Pardon?
Writer 2: Judo Space Monkey?
Producer: Too obvious.
Writer 1: Kung Fu Panda?
Producer: Yes! Go make it! Do you think we can get Jackie Chan involved?

Conclusion: If the kids decide to watch this every day for a month when it comes out on DVD, I can live with that.

Explosions: Some comic firework accidents.
Infeasible displays of acrobatics: Countless.
Wise old turtles: One.
Points made using peach metaphors: Several.
Noodles: Plenty.

Rating: 4/5.

Labels: action (vol.3), comedy, family, fantasy, film review (vol.5)

 
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  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 (vol.4)

 
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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 (vol.4), 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 (vol.3), comedy, film review (vol.4)

 
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  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 (vol.3), comedy, film review (vol.4), quick

 
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  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 (vol.3), horror, quick

 
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  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 (vol.2), quick

 
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  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 (vol.1), comedy, film review (vol.2)

 
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  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 (vol.2)

 
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  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 (vol.1)

 
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