Well, you know you've had a challenging day at the flicks when you're pinning your hopes of a smile on a Warner Bros comedy about an absentee sperm-donor...
Twin brothers Peter and Kyle Reynolds (Ed Helms and Owen Wilson, and before you ask - no, their completely differing looks aren't the punchline for a single joke in here. Twins don't have to be identical of course, but it's almost as if one of them was second-choice casting after the script had been completed). I'll start again...
Twin brothers Peter and Kyle Reynolds are both nominally successful in their chosen fields as a proctologist and the branding-face of a barbecue sauce respectively, but both have a midlife crisis on the horizon. This is accelerated when their mother Helen (Glenn Close) lets slip that their estranged father isn't the man she always said he was. Now, the two have to overcome their superficial differences to venture on a cross-country road trip and track down their real, biological dad. Hilarity ensues. Or at least I imagine those were the final two words of the pitch that secured funding for this to be made.
My laundry-list of complaints with Father Figures is lengthy, broad and simultaneously petty, but I'll try to keep this brief. First and foremost, it's actually amazing - considering their genre-history - that two established comic actors such as Helms and Wilson share absolutely no chemistry on-screen. Their characters have been written to be diametrically opposite at the beginning of the film, but there's little-to-no closure of the gap as it wears on. The road trip formula provides the pace and changing scenery required to drive (no pun intended) a movie of this type forward, but it lacks the sincerity to be either moving or funny, both of which it's clearly aiming for.
The whole thing is just so slack, as if the string of setpieces have been penned by a different writers who have never met, or been given character outlines*1. The twists in each strand are so telegraphed that the film may as well include a synopsis in the opening titles, and the gags use lowest common denominator humour (to be expected), but delivered by a cast who are at least 25 years too old to be doing so with any level of confidence. While (despite the best efforts of writer Justin Malen) the film never quite crosses the line into hateful territory, it's oddly bereft of atmosphere, zest or flow. Like a dress-rehearsal for blocking and lighting purposes, but where the cast assume that the cameras aren't rolling.
Naturally, all of this builds to a sentimental crescendo and closing moral-message which the film has not earned in any way whatsoever. It's by no means the most ill-judged movie I've watched in recent memory, but Father Figures fundamentally fails in its remit as a comedy. Although what can we really expect from a screenplay which uses special needs, incest and colon cancer as throwaway punchlines?
To be fair, one patron found the movie consistently and vociferously funny. Then they packed up their vast collection of snacks and left fifteen minutes before the end, not to return.
Even the fans of Father Figures fucking hate Father Figures...
Imagine a car crash involving a gender-flipped Mamma Mia! and Identity Thief, except worse than that sounds.
No.
Stream in haste; repent at leisure.
It's not.
Well I'd be delighted to hear your opinions about the film, put it that way.
There isn't.
Level 2: Well this film's got that Ving Rhames in it, and he was in that Pulp Fiction alongside Sam 'Mace Windu' Jackson, Bronagh 'Maoi Madakor' Gallagher and Phil 'Rebels Bail Organa' LaMarr.
*1 Most telling dialogue exchange: "Hey, at least buy me dinner first, next time!" quips Peter's patient at his proctology clinic. "That's really funny, I've never heard that one before" he deadpans back. But the jaded medical professional does this 30 seconds after saying "Well, the good news is I've found your car keys in here!", which one assumes he uses at least six times a day, pretty much negating any criticism of clichéd responses. It's this sort of glaringly inconsistent characterisation which further embarrasses a cast who appear to plotting how to get the film removed from the IMDB while it's still being made... [ BACK ]
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
Oh, it's that kind of Zombie-flick, I see. When it's not poking adoring-fun at the genre*1, British cinema has a tendency not only to slightly over-egg the claustrophobia in a living-dead scenario, but also to avoid using the Z-word altogether (which can easily come off as a sort of snobbishness). Y'see, for all the BFI funding, arty posters, delicate cinematography and complete lack of the aforementioned word in the script, The Girl With All The Gifts*2 is a zombie movie. And is all the better for that.
Not wanting to jump right onto the pre-established bandwagon, the infection-vehicle in this movie is a fungus which infects the brain leading to an almost complete shut-down other than ravenous hunger for anything which is alive and uninfected. But it's still spread by bites, blood and bogeys though, and the end result is the same: shambling in stand-by mode, feral and desperate when they get a whiff of fresh meat, and anything other than a heat-shot will only slow them down. The film takes place after the initial plague of society-rending infection has occurred, with the remains of humanity hiding in bunkers frantically searching for a cure. A potential avenue seems to be a generation of children born after the outbreak, who exhibit the uncontrollable craving for human flesh when they're within nose-shot of it, but appear normal in all other situations. By applying blocker gel to mask their scent, a research team tests and educates one particular group in a fortified military base outside of London, keeping them in borderline barbaric conditions (it's not the fact that they're secured in wheelchairs during lessons which evokes notes of Guantanamo, but that they're forced to wear Crocs). When the undead hordes breach the base's defences, a small group of survivors treks toward the capital in search of civilisation, reinforcement and hope…
From the outset, the film waves its symbolism-flag proudly (if slightly heavy-handedly). Mike Carey has adapted his own novel for the screen, which is always preferable, but some of the story's more delicate points feel hammered home a little, especially in the third act. Sennia Nanua is great as Melanie, the eponymous Girl, while Paddy Considine and Gemma Arterton walk a delicate line between dour-drama and camp-action-movie. But it's Glenn Close who gets to do most of the heavy-lifting in delivering exposition to the audience (her role as the chief scientist researching a vaccine makes this natural at first, but by act-three you know that every time she opens her mouth it's so that the film doesn't have to show something).
In fact, from the cast to the cinematography, to the percussive score and to Colm McCarthy's tense direction, everyone seems very committed to the project. You just get the feeling they were shooting a slightly better film than the one that came out of the editing suite, somehow. I can't work out if the story runs out of steam or just paints itself into a corner. More details are crammed into the life-cycle of the virus, but at a time when we're more concerned with the characters. By the time we reach the crescendo, all the foreshadowed circles are closed neatly enough, but the film is running rigidly on its rails. Never clichéd exactly, but there are fewer surprises in the screenplay the further along it goes, and the conclusion feels far less convincing than the premise*3.
If The Girl With All The Gifts film had kept to the symbolic and philosophical path, I think I'd have enjoyed it more. The film is a valiant effort as it stands, but seems to be happy being a a slightly run-of-the-mill apocalyptic thriller when it could be so much more…
The film's closest spiritual relative is probably 28 Days Later, although there are splashes of Dog Soldiers and even Never Let Me Go in there, too.
For the immersiveness of the cinematography, maybe, but you won't lose too much by watching this at home.
I think it probably does; but the question is, is that enough?.
Probably not best but solid, certainly.
Nope.
Nope.
Level 1: Daniel Eghan. He plays a soldier in this movie, and he's due to appear in Rogue One this December as a militiaman. Me neither, I'm afraid. Sorry Daniel.
Obviously I only know this from IMDB. That's how I research most of these, but when you get an extra and/or bit-part actor, it really underlines it, I know. Anyway, it's still more satisfying than the Level 2 connection of Glenn Close appearing in Guardians Of The Galaxy alongside Peter 'voice-of-Maul' Serafinowicz. Level 1s are just better, trust me.
2 And can I be among the first to say how nice it is to see that The Girl has ended her dangerous pursuits of Playing With Fire and Kicking Hornets Nests, and is now doing nothing more dangerous than coming home after a long afternoon's Christmas shopping…
…and while you may well groan and place bets on that joke being recycled from Twitter, it was nevertheless recycled from my own Twitter-feed, at least.
I thank you.
*3SPOILERY questions for those of you who've seen the film (highlight-to-read):
1)While it's a ghoulish picture that Caldwell paints about the second-gen zombies 'eating their way out' of their mothers, how would foetuses be able to do that when babies don't start teething until about three months after they're born? Plus it'd take them ages to get out of there, how would they breathe once the host is dead and all circulation of blood and amniotic fluid has stopped? Hey, don't look at me, I'm not the one who decided to throw biology into the screenplay... 2)Not withstanding that the pack of feral children seem to have learned to feed, walk and generally support themselves with precisely no outside guidance (a newborn cub will die on its own, instincts or not), surely by the time they're herded together to start learning as the credits roll, all the behavioural bad-habits are burned-in? The kids in the research centre had been 'rescued' at a younger age and raised more like regular humans; this lot are rolling around the floor in their own shit…
DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.
