Tag Archives: Comedies

The Big Wedding  (2013)    56/100

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Rating :   56/100                                                                       89 Min        15

Completely silly. Featuring the stellar cast pictured above, this remake of the French film Mon frère se marie (My brother is getting married) is comprised of very predictable comedy and farce, as everyone invited to the wedding of the youngsters Alejandro and Missy, played by Ben Barnes and Amanda Seyfried, turns out to be intimate with one another, whether in the present or past tense. Robert De Niro’s Don is currently in a live in relationship with Bebe (Susan Sarandon), but was previously married to Ellie (Diane Keaton), with whom he had two children and adopted a third, who is now to be married. The only problem is, Alejandro’s biological mother is coming to the wedding, and she is deemed so devoutly Catholic that all evidence of the foster parent’s divorce must be covered up, meaning Ellie and Don pretend to be married again and Bebe goes off in the huff.

This primes most of the material, as infidelity is trivialised and yet the film absurdly still attempts a few scenes of serious drama, mostly surrounding Don’s daughter Lyla (Katherine Heigl), though they are at least kept to brief interludes. There are a few laughs in there, and if you like the cast and are in the mood for some irreverent inanity then it might be worth a look in, just don’t expect to be rolling around in the aisles at any point …

The Hangover Part III  (2013)    33/100

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Rating :   33/100                                                                     100 Min        15

Being somewhat hungover whilst going to see this film, I was looking forward to sharing a degree of pathos with the protagonists, a knowing wry smile on my face as I sipped my super strong coffee and compared my antics the night before to those of the returning ‘Wolfpack’ onscreen. Surprisingly, mine were the more riotous, as this film DOES NOT feature drinking, and by its absence neither does it also feature shared hangovers and a plot to unravel what happened the night before. It should have been entitled ‘Phil, Stu, Alan and Doug go on an absurd and pointless adventure to recover money that their old buddy Mr Chow stole from some drug dealer, even though it has nothing really to do with them, and in between dull excuses for action, Alan will do random stupid things to which Phil will say ‘What the fuck?’ and this will constitute the one gag that is repeated throughout until you almost fall asleep, despite your super strong coffee, and Doug will be kidnapped and disappear again like in the first film as he is the most boring character’. False marketing to say the least (there is actually a hangover scene, but you have to wait through the start of the credits at the end of the film to see it). All the original cast return for this, with the addition of secondary roles for John Goodman and Melissa McCarthy, but none of them can lift the inane script out of the trash can it must have accidentally been taken out of. Even features Alan luring a small child into a tent to be alone with him so he can pretend to be his real father and talk about how he used to like holding him close to his chest. Just plain wrong.

21 & Over  (2013)    63/100

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Rating :   63/100                                                                       93 Min        15

From the writers of ‘The Hangover’ (Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, this time directing too) and essentially with the same storyline but different characters, focusing on a trio of college students in order to apply their tried and tested routine on a younger market. The three friends are played by Miles Teller, Justin Chon and Skylar Astin and we follow their exploits as two of them determine to celebrate the third’s twenty first birthday with a raucous night on the lash, whilst promising to get him back home in time for a good night’s preparatory sleep, an important medical school interview looming the next morning.

The comedy is forced from the onset through necessity, and it’s entirely formulaic, which sometimes grates, but it does have its moments and it is given a dash of sincerity and respect by fully committed performances from the central cast. Fans of the Hangover series can expect to like this too.

I’m So Excited / Los Amantes Pasajeros  (2013)    39/100

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Rating :   39/100                                                                       90 Min        15

The latest Spanish film from Pedro Almodovar falls way short of the expectation mark in this camp comedy, set mainly in the cabin and business class section of a troubled aircraft flying in circles around Toledo in Spain, though it does still include the expected moments of creative perversion. The plane’s landing gear is stuck, courtesy of one distracted Antonio Banderas by his character’s wife Penelope Cruz whilst he was clearing the chocks off the runway (they are only in the film for the duration of this brief scene, the rest of the ensemble cast will probably not be familiar to most audiences outside of Spain).

Something will have undoubtedly been lost in the translation here, and comedy is probably the genre that suffers most from subtitles, but the laughs never really get better than a sub-standard sitcom, and most revolve around the homo, or bi, sexual encounters of the staff as they contemplate a possible incineration on landing, all largely done as fairly obvious farce.  It’s a far cry from the dizzy artistic heights of his last film, ‘The Skin I Live In’ back in 2011. For better comedy on a very similar theme, see tv series ‘The High Life’ starring Alan Cumming.

All Stars  (2013)    75/100

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Rating :   75/100                                                                     106 Min        U

Great wee film for kids, essentially with exactly the same premise from the ‘Step Up’ and ‘Streetdance’ films lifted and placed into a British high school. The most important thing about the film is that it successfully encourages kids to dance, so much so that most of the younger audience in the cinema were in fact doing just that whilst it was playing. The focus is on choreographed street dance, or break dancing if you prefer, with brief excerpts from ballroom and tap too.

The group consist of a number of stereotypes, the posh kids, the tough as nails female, the chubby male, but ones which work pretty well together, with everyone learning the value of being in a group working towards something, as they come together to compete in a local championship that may perhaps just save their youth centre from demolition in the process, and the chubby kid learns to swap his burgers for salad too, although since he’s suddenly upped his calorie needs this may be wishful thinking on his part.

All of the young budding actors could easily see themselves in film again with some pretty talented dancing in there, and Fleur Houdijk in particular demonstrates a precocious onscreen presence. One of the main story arcs deserves to be criticised though, with the parents of one of the kids demanding he give up dancing so he can study – surely it ought to be quite possible to do both?

Scary Movie V  (2013)    3/100

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Rating :   3/100                                                                         86 Min        15

Easily the worst of the Scary Movie films. It opens with Charlie Sheen and Lindsay Lohan in a bed together, which is surely the definition of a scary movie, but unlike it’s predecessors, Anna Faris turned down the opportunity to reprise her role as central character Cindy, and given the dark depths her career has often been plunged into, that really says something. Instead, the central plot follows the characters of Dan and Jody, pictured above and played by Simon Rex (who appeared in a couple of the others) and Ashley Tisdale respectively, as it proceeds to spoof some of the more famous horror and sci-fi film releases of the last couple of years. Using ‘Mama’ as the core concept, some of its other cinematic references are the Paranormal Activity franchise, especially numbers three and four, ‘The Cabin in the Woods’, ‘Evil Dead’, ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’, ‘Black Swan’, and ‘Inception’. It’s mostly devoid of laughs, with a surprisingly long list of famous names like Usher and Snoop Dogg (in fact, in this sense it’s like an American version of ‘Keith Lemon – The Movie’), though it does feature an especially long outtakes section during the credits, which was actually more entertaining than the movie proper.

The Odd life of Timothy Green  (2012)    59/100

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Rating :   59/100                                                                     105 Min        U

There is a wonderful heart to this film, in that it focuses on a young family who find out they will never be able to have children and so, in an evening of cathartic desperation, they decide to write out all the things they imagine their child would have been, kind, ‘honest to a fault’ etc. and then they bury the list in an old wooden box in the back garden. A mysterious rain falls and up springs Timothy Green, their fully fledged nine or so years old son from the back garden, replete with leaves genetically attached to his calves.

It’s a nice idea, and the film from there on deals with issues of early, and abrupt, parenthood, and family relations and expectations. Unfortunately, it does so in an all too breezy way, and for the most part the story doesn’t prove engaging. The final third does deliver more on the emotional side of things and it is a spirited performance from the family members – Joel Edgerton and Jennifer Garner as the parents, and CJ Adams as Green, with a host of other recognisable faces appearing throughout, including David Morse and Dianne Wiest. Overall a nice, simple film, if a little flimsy – fine for young family viewing.

The Croods  (2013)    53/100

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Rating :   53/100                                                                       98 Min        U

The latest from Dreamworks Animation, and if we look at the original concept art from director Chris Sanders below..

The Croods concept art

… then compare that to the finished article at the head of this page, we see a certain resonance with the title. The story follows the desperate adventure of a family of prehistoric human/squirrel hybrids as they attempt to avoid plummeting into the fiery chasms of molten lava that dog their travels, the result of cataclysmic tectonic activity. Not to worry though, there’s plenty of time to fall in love and invent fire, shoes, and the umbrella along the way, courtesy of the wiry but bright male orphan Guy (Ryan Reynolds) and his affections for the physically stronger, and very much in vogue (and slightly aping ‘Brave’), female cave dweller Eep (Emma Stone), much to the chagrin of her equally meaty father (Nicolas Cage).

It’s a very standard Dreamworks movie, with little of interest for adult viewers but enough constant action and fanciful colours to keep younger audiences entertained. There is a chase sequence for a precious edible egg near the beginning, for example, that seems to last for an eternity as it’s passed from family member to family member via a series of increasingly unlikely measures in order to avoid capture from its mother, whom The Red Dragon’s sympathies were mostly with, and come the end of it one’s attention will almost certainly have wandered naturally away from the film. This pattern is oft repeated, although it gets slightly better as it goes on, and despite the modern day cliché of the romance involved, there is a nice touch when Guy refers to the apple of his eye as being “heavy”, at which she seems genuinely complimented and offers a beaming “Thank you” in return – good to see a children’s animation endorsing a slightly different feminine physique from the status quo of wafer thin princesses.

As with other Dreamworks productions, all the animation was done via computer, and some of the details on the main characters seem a little basic and lacking in finesse. The film also highlights, not for the first time, despite their Shreks and Madagascars, a difference in class level for the company against its much more diverse rivals, Disney, Disney Pixar and Studio Ghibli, not least of all by virtue of the fact director Sanders was the co-director and co-writer of Disney’s ‘Lilo and Stitch’, which The Red Dragon considers one of Disney’s most original and best, and he actually left the company to film this for Dreamworks, although he completed the successful ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ for them first, and he has Kirk De Micco helping, or diluting, his efforts with both direction and the screenplay here on ‘The Croods’. To keep up with its competition Dreamworks really has to make more of an effort to engage the whole family, rather than just its smallest constituent parts, although they have made an interesting strategic move into the Chinese market, with ‘Oriental Dreamworks’ under construction in Shanghai, and their first feature film, ‘Kung Fu Panda 3’, expected to be released in 2016 coinciding with the completion of their ‘Dream Center’ in the city, which will feature a host of shops, theatres, the world’s biggest IMAX screen, and is aimed to rival the likes of Broadway and London’s West End.

Not short on corporate ambition then, though the ‘Dream Center’ will be going head to head with a new Disneyland opening in Shanghai that same year…

Identity Thief  (2013)    59/100

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Rating :   59/100                                                                     111 Min        15

The latest film to revolve around a road trip and, therein, a forced scenario that sees two unlikely characters ‘buddy up’, in this case Jason Bateman’s financial services worker and the person who has stolen his identity and threatens to destroy his assets and credibility, played in a wonderful performance by Melissa McCarthy. In fact, if it were not for McCarthy this film would have almost absolutely nothing of value in it, the pace of the comedy is slow and often too obvious, as is the story generally, the use of violence for comedic effect is by turns funny and then way, way off, and Jason Bateman turns in another of his now much overused roles of the reluctant ‘strictly by the rules’ straight guy ‘forced’ into extremity, and his character is, even given the scenario, creepily mean to his new criminal friend. McCarthy manages to bring pathos and emotion to a below average production, and one can only wonder what she would have been able to do with a half decent script. Robert Patrick and John Cho appear in support.

Catch Me if You Can  (2002)    71/100

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Rating :   71/100                                                                     141 Min        12A

Spielberg directs a story ‘inspired by’ (which sadly means everything we see has to be taken with a pinch of salt, although the man in question is a fan of the film and its narrative embellishments) the tale of Frank Abagnale Jr., a man who discovers an early life of adventure as a con artist, taking that old profession to fairly epic and legendary new heights. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Frank, with Tom Hanks as the FBI agent closing in on him, who begins with a peculiar accent and then ditches it in favour of his own half way through. There are strong elements of farce in the way Hanks is evaded and tricked, and the whole film has a tangible and immediately accessible comedic vibe. A great job has been done of making DiCaprio’s age appear different in the various time frames concerned and, although it is a tad too long, the characters and comedy are dramatic enough to make it all work. Support is delivered by Amy Adams, Elizabeth Banks, Jennifer Gardner, Martin Sheen and Christopher Walken as Frank Abagnale senior. Interestingly, there seems to be a continuity between this and Spielberg’s later animated adventure Tintin, most obviously with the music by John Williams.