Rating :   53/100                                                                     100 Min       

A comedy about performance magicians that starts really strongly, with attention grabbing use of music and the scene well set, and then loses its way badly, largely due to a central character as devoid of comedy and interest value as the cardboard cutout of himself that he carries around with him. It also ‘misses a trick’ by very obviously using computers and camera play to perform a lot of the magic, which for a big budget movie is really not good enough. Steve Carell plays the aforementioned central character of Wonderstone, who has performed countless shows over a successful career with his high school buddy and fellow magician Anton Marvelton, played by Steve Buscemi, and is now jaded, bored, and bullying everyone around him, with an ego even larger than his over the top hairdo. Enter new wannabe magician Jane, played by the perfectly formed Olivia Wilde, who will of course make him see the error of his ways. It’s overtly trite to say the least, and unfortunately the comedy is largely unwaveringly flat. Notwithstanding, however, a wonderful turn from Jim Carrey as the new daredevil of street magic, Steve Gray, appearing on the scene like a cross between Johnny Knoxville, David Blaine and Axl Rose. Here, on the periphery of the central plot, the film is more successful, if only they’d put more effort into the centre rather than going for the same old dull as ditchwater routine. Alan Arkin and James Gandolfini also appear in support.

Rating :   15/100                                                                       95 Min       

Mearow. That is the sound of my soul weeping for the hours of life invested in this film which could have been more enjoyably spent cleaning the oven with a toothbrush. Let not my suffering be in vain. Supposedly based on a real road trip undertaken by screenwriter Dan Fogelman (‘Cars’, ‘Crazy Stupid Love’) with his mother years previously, it could be the film only exists as some kind of belated apology to his family, though it is quite likely he also watched ‘Due Date’ (10), which wasn’t bad, and thought, ‘Hey, let’s do exactly the same thing but with a guy and his mother, it’ll be hilarious!’. It’s not. The guy and mother in question here are Seth Rogen and Barbra Streisand (for whom this is her first leading role since ‘The Mirror Has Two Faces’ in 1996), and the most immediate problem is that Rogen plays someone so completely hopeless that it’s impossible to identify with him, as he plans a tour of the states to sell his cleaning product and very obviously bores everyone to tears with his sales pitch along the way. Cue mother who will eventually have the right approach to solve everything, but who will initially be rejected, and son who takes her along to secretly reunite her with an old flame, which will initially cause upset, before the realisation that her best intentions were at heart. If there was any comedy along the trip they take, which includes a visit to the Grand Canyon as in ‘Due Date’, then I missed it entirely, although it did bring to the fore that using the term ‘oriental’ is no longer politically correct. When did that happen? Is ‘Asian’ out the window too? The Red Dragon, it seems, is a little behind the times, this tends to happen when one is centuries old. Streisand’s character also has a gizmo that attaches to her handbag and allows it to dangle under tables so it needn’t be put on the floor, which was reasonably nifty, and indeed a supporting character picked up on it in preference to Rogen’s product. Thus I have extracted the only two points worthy of note from the film so that you may be saved from the tragic experience of watching it.

Rating :   70/100                                                                     134 Min       

The latest from producer/writer/director Judd Apatow focusing on two of his previous characters, specifically married couple Pete (Paul Rudd) and Debbie (Leslie Mann) from 2007’s ‘Knocked Up’, as they both reach the milestone of their fortieth birthday. Their two daughters are played by Mann’s children with husband Apatow, namely Maude Apatow as hormonal teenager Sadie, and Iris Apatow, who is a bit of a scene stealer, as her much younger sister. Good use is made of Megan Fox in support, or perhaps more correctly, her body, as she is accompanied by Jason Segel, Chris O’Dowd and Melissa McCarthy, although each of these feature too briefly in a film that is the latest in a cinematic trend of movies that are fifteen to twenty minutes too long. Fans of the actors and director will certainly enjoy this, and the cast do bring the characters and story to life with relish, delivering a steady stream of pretty decent comedy.

Altogether they pull off the film, but the drama behind the story, supposedly focusing on a couple going through difficult times triggered by money issues and the passage of time, doesn’t really work for several reasons. Firstly, Leslie Mann could easily pass for someone ten years younger (she is actually forty in real life) and comparing her body to that of Megan Fox, as her character does in the film, isn’t really fair, although even Fox has reputedly had at least a slight nose alteration since her rise to fame with ‘Transformers’ in 2007. Debbie constantly has a go at Pete for eating cupcakes and we suppose his increasing weight is putting a ‘strain’ on their relationship, and yet he seems to do a lot of fairly serious cycling and looks quite fit in general. There are a lot of relationship issues thrown together over a very short time frame, and it gets particularly overdone, repetitive and messy toward the end, but overall it doesn’t detract too much from it being an enjoyable film. Stay through some of the credits at the end for a great outtake scene with Melissa McCarthy too.