Bad Boys For Life Cert: 15 / 124 mins / Dir. Bilall Fallah & Adil El Arbi / Trailer Mea culpa. When I intimated that Michael Winterbottom's Greed was the most self-indulgent mess to land in cinemas for some time, I hadn't considered Bad Boys For Life playing in the screen next door. Coming slightly late to this party, I find myself relieved that at least I didn't rush.
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence bellow their way through a script comprising almost entirely of short words and written by an excitable fifteen yr-old, where exposition and lensflare play such prominent roles that their names should really be on the poster. This tale of retirement, revenge and relentless slow-motion would be incoherent if it wasn't so painfully linear. It plays like a contractual obligation sequel, except that wouldn't explain the seventeen year gap between installments.
But this isn't your standard 'grumpy old men wink into the camera while making jokes about having a bad hip' jaunt (although it is that, too). Oh no my friend, this film's got a USB drive in it while Uber and 4Chan get verbally name-checked, so you know this is for The Kids. It's not so much a callback to the glory days of the action genre, more a cobbled together greatest hits reel of explosions, gunfire and everyone in the cast getting a turn to go wide-eyed and shout "Oh hell no!".
The film settles down a bit after an hour or so, but only in the way that you know by then it's going to be around half an hour too long. Bad Boys For Lite feels like getting the band back together purely to jam old songs in the garage. Great if you're in the band, not so much for everyone expecting to see a show. And I must confess that I'm not a connoisseur of Mr Martin Lawrence's screen work, but his underperforming here makes Will Smith seem sincere. Lawrence looks like he's having a stroke for a lot of the movie, is that normal?
In the film's favour, I can at least say that:
✔ It's brightly coloured
✔ It's energetic
✔ Somebody gets killed with a forklift
I'm sure a lot of people will enjoy Bad Boys For Life, and good for them. In my defence I missed about a third of the movie because I was rolling my eyes so hard all I could see was the inside of my head.
Judging by the way the film fetishises it own franchise, I imagine it's very similar to the first two Bad Boys outings*1.
For a lot of people, apparently so.
Nope.
Nope.
Yep.
I have no idea.
The last forty minutes of the movie is basically a blanket of white noise.
Level 2: Will Smith is in this, and he was in that Collateral Beauty with Keira 'Sabé' Knightley.
*1 For clarity, I have actually seen the first two movies in this series around their time of original release, and I remember literally nothing about them. Under the normal run of things I'd have had a refresher evening before going to see this third installment, but in all honesty I suspect that would have just put me off the prospect altogether. [ 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.
Spies In Disguise Cert: PG / 102 mins / Dir. Troy Quane & Nick Bruno / Trailer
Reader, I seem to have two states of mind when it comes to non-Disney studio animation movies. I'm either viewing the trailer for some saccharine nightmare and rolling my eyes at the caption-card listing which musical artists appear on the soulless, thumping soundtrack, as if the inclusion of sanitised, corporate techno could lend the feature any more individuality - or I'm watching an actual movie in 2020 with Snow's Informer and Rob Base's It Takes Two in the soundtrack, in which a character makes a scripted reference to the members of New Kids On The Block while I'm thinking 'wait...is this an old person's idea of what a young person's movie sounds like?'.
As you know by now, there is no pleasing me.
BLUE SKY So, failing to please me today is Blue Sky Studios' latest offering, Spies In Disguise. Based on an idea from an award-winning animated short from a decade ago, it's effectively a body-swap / odd-couple comedy, set against the backdrop of a spy-caper. Will Smith and Tom Holland provide the central voices, and it's fine. By which I mean the animation is bang-on-standard (shiny but bland), the rest of the voice-cast are interchangeable with similar jobbing actors*1 and while the central message of pacifism in a violent world is by no means a bad thing, it's rammed home so ham-fistedly that this derails any genuine nuance or debate on the subject*2.
It's absolutely Fine™.
The best moments arise from Smith's Agent Lance Sterling as he's transformed into a pigeon and undergoes a comedic Cronenbergian psychological duality-shift to match. Although he's a pigeon who can actually talk, he also understands other pigeons and begins to make friends with them, with some newly-avian mannerisms filtering through to Sterling's human form after a species-reversal in the finale. This is arguably far more interesting than the spy-flick.
BRIGHTSIDE Unfortunately, the editing process seems to have provided a bumpy road to the cinema. There's a 'pigeons can't see glass' routine from the one of the film's trailers*3 which has been completely excised from the completed movie, so that when this is used several times as a punchline there's no preceding set-up. This isn't the worst gaffe a film could make, but it's indicative of the haphazard final product. By the time this reaches its third-act, the cumulative effect of all the characters and plot threads waiting to be tied up results in what can only be described as an incoherent crescendo.
Blue Sky Studios have been dining out on Ice Age for too long, now. Don't get me wrong, Spies In Disguise is basically okay, but it's a well-meaning Happy Meal of a movie; the young ones will be attracted by the bright colours, additives and play-value, and it won't poison those taking them along for the outing. It's short-term energy for a day out, but you couldn't live on it. Nor would you want to...
Pretty much any mid-tier animation of the last ten years.
If your padawans are tugging at your sleeve, you could do worse.
Stream it.
It is not.
Likely.
Not that I heard.
Although the last twenty minutes of this movie is pretty much white-noise, so there could be one in there.
*1 While Ben Mendelsohn always gives a spirited performance, the likeness of super-villain Killian (solid name, guys) matches the actors voice is precisely no way. Karen Gillan is also on hand as kooky tech-sleuth Eyes, with a volume of dialogue suggesting it was recorded in a ten-minute session during post-production - they just wanted her name on the poster. [ BACK ]
*2 Namely in one surprisingly heartfelt scene, where Will Smith's "...because the bad guys don't care how nice you are" may be the wisest words of the entire movie, shortly to be lost in a fog of CGI glitter. [ BACK ]
*3 No, since you ask, I can't seem to find it on YouTube. Look, I've definitely seen it, it was definitely there at one point. I just don't want to waste more hours of my life watching more of Spies In Disguise, thanks. [ 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.
Who among us ever thought they'd see the day, where old and new can collide seamlessly before our eyes? The marriage of cutting-edge technology (to the point where it's not yet finished, in fact) and some of the most retrograde action filler you've seen since the early 90s straight-to-video boom? Yet here we are, standing agog as US Government black-ops hitman Henry Brogan (Will Smith) battles it out with someone who looks a bit like Will Smith used to look a quarter of a century ago, if you squint. And you've had a couple of drinks. And if you never really paid that much attention to Will Smith a quarter of a century ago.
FUN But hey, it's all good fun! No wait, it's not is it? That's right, it's not good fun. I'm always getting those mixed up. The first act of Ang Lee's Gemini Man lopes along like a perfectly serviceable moody thriller that's about to set up its mind-shattering reveal. Except that reveal has already been completely undercut by a) the film's title, b) the film's poster, and c) the film's trailer which explains the entire fucking concept before its audience has even had a chance to buy a ticket.
Dropped into the October schedule like a badly rendered stepchild, Gemini Man comes over as a shelved 199x Van Damme thriller which has been waiting for the technology to catch up, and when it did Jason Statham said he was busy so they phoned Will Smith instead. And then it turned out the technology had lied about catching up. And lied badly.
So it's Looper but for people who don't like thinking about stuff. Will Smith trying to kill his other self, except one of The Will Smiths is younger and both of The Will Smiths are good people really and it was all Evil Clive Owen's fault anyway, with the latter's accent from the Washington DC suburb of Walthamstow and having gone up four trouser sizes on account of all the fucking scenery he's chewing. Benedict Wong stars as the gadget-guy / pilot / comic-relief. Mary Elizabeth Winstead is The Girl One*1. More on her later.
SPENDER On the plus-side, the action sequences are relatively well shot and directed in terms of actual physicality. The movie features a gorgeous continuous tracking shot of Smith-Senior on a motorcycle, and that's doing so well until he starts being chased in turn by Smith-Junior. The resulting fracas contains some of the worst animated acrobatics in living cinematic memory (think of the swing-sequences in 2002's Spider-Man, except it's 2019 and now there's really no excuse). Your leading man puts in a satisfactory turn in a role which isn't more than half-written anyway, as do Winstead and Wong. But Gemini Man was never about characterisation to begin with.
Yes, as to the main attraction? Well, future-phobes will be relieved to hear we're not there yet. Much like Tarkin and Leia from Rogue One, the digitally de-aged Will Smith looks more or less fine. Until his face begins to move that is, at which point we're sent hurtling down the Uncanny Valley fast enough to give us whiplash. Although as much as Smith-Junior looks like Pixar's work-in-progress of animating a new turnip character, his digital visage still emotes more feeling than that of Clive Owen; the cinematic equivalent of a bookmark in that he just sits there inert, not adding anything to the plot and whose only function is to periodically remind you where you'd got to. Gemini Man is clinical proof that any mediocre film can always be made worse by Owen's presence.
So in the third act where, coincidentally, a third Smith turns up (in a twist so ham-fistedly telegraphed that you can almost hear Ang Lee hoping that no one in the audience has seen Oblivion) - I was thinking 'Oh, hang on... ace-marksman assassin, super-fighter, wearing a mask... is Will Smith's other self Deadshot? Is this a deftly-marketed Suicide Squad lead-in?' Nope. No such luck, mate. Wishful coincidence. It's just another Will Smith.
CROCODILE SHOES The passage of time is treated as an inconvenience throughout, international air journeys undertaken off-screen and in apparently zero-time according to the conversations continuing around them. The whole thing is edited as if a two-hour movie has been commissioned for a 45-minute TV slot (oh that it were so short). Although at one point during an in-car, background-painting conversation as Smith-Junior asks his progenitor "you grew up in Philadelphia, right?", I at least thought we were going to get some rapping thrown in to add some much-needed goodwill nostalgia. Nope, another opportunity missed.
Still, at least a flick like this can bring some woke 21st century sensibility to the action genre, right? As if. At one point where Smith-Senior is fighting his younger self in the Budapest catacombs*2, Mary Elizabeth Winstead's sole purpose as a trained, qualified and experienced government agent is to stand pointing a shotgun at them. Not as a threat or a warning, but because it's got a torch mounted on the top and the audience wouldn't be able to see what's happening otherwise. Five minutes later when the brawl has moved to a subterranean pool, she drops a flare in and jumps in after them. I mean does the Bechdel Test even matter when your supporting actress is doubling as your lighting technician? Isn't that equality enough, guys?
We close with some faux-philosophical bantering about the ethics of cloning and patriotism (no, seriously), a payoff which probably looked neat on the page followed by the kind of implausibly happy ending that feels like it was written and assembled over a year after principal photography. Not least because Smith-Junior's CGI face is by this point so warped and distended that it looks as if a swarm of wasps may be about to emerge at any moment.
"I'm gonna be okay!" says our reformed demi-protagonist as the credits beckon. No. You're really not, mate. None of us are going to be okay until the Uncanny Valley is left out of Hollywood journey-planning for good...
Screaming into a mirror and noticing your reflection is out of sync.
And is drawn in crayon.
And while we're on the subject, David Benioff has co-written the screenplay to Gemini Man. That's David Benioff as in "Benioff & Weiss" from The Game Of The Thrones. Now, I don't watch GoT (long story, no real agenda but catch me about it another time), but if Gemini Man is anything to go by then the upcoming Star Wars project from Benioff & Weiss is probably in the shit already...
*1 And if you find yourself in the fandom subset of being a) British, and b) slightly in love with Mary Elizabeth Winstead, you'll be pleasantly surprised when Will Smith arrives on his aggressively pursued date to find Mary already halfway through a pint. Fantastic stuff, albeit another callback to mid-90s UK culture. Mind you, a waiter brings over two more pints a minute later and all of a sudden the one she had in front of her is gone. Like the waiter's taken that away. We didn't see her finish it. Either the continuity sucks in this movie or the table service does... [ BACK ]
*2 And why does this part of the film take place in Budapest? No idea. No real reason at all mate. Not mentioned. Scenery and/or tax breaks, one imagines. But they come and go back to Langley VA like it's nipping round to the Co-Op for some milk. Which would be arguably a more interesting film... [ 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.
Well, it’s the retooling that nobody clamoured for, but as part of Disney’s programme of self-exploitation we got it anyway. Aladdin is in live-action. Or as close to live-action as any adventure movie gets these days. To add an extra note of caution, this particular iteration is helmed by Guy Ritchie – a dynamic and talented film-maker who is also responsible for the atrocious King Arthur.
Yet somehow, Aladdin's okay. Very good in places, very ordinary in others. Distracting enough fun for a first-time audience, but the Disney magic just isn’t consistent enough.
MANIC Naturally, there was some consternation when Will Smith was announced as the Genie previously played by Robin Williams. While some of the manic delivery still lingers in the writing of the part, the CGI animation now employed means that he actually channels Jim Carrey in The Mask more than he does Williams. That said, there appears to have been some sloppiness between filming the Genie’s scene-surrounds and interactions, and actually recording Smith’s head against a greenscreen to drop in afterwards. The problem being that the eyeline between Aladdin and the Genie doesn’t quite match up whenever Smith wears the blue makeup, so it really feels like he was in another room. The sections of the movie where Smith has his own skin-tone don’t suffer from this at all, so make of that what you will.
But the extra half hour of run-time when compared to the 1992 animation certainly allows the story to breathe more freely, slowing down the often irritating pacing of that beloved original*1. And it’s worth noting that while the live-action version also opens with a framing device as a nod to its forebear, it also remembers to return to this at the close of the film.
WILLY Mena Massoud is a solid lead in the title role, although there’s the feeling that he’s somehow constrained by the part. The real breakout from all of this though is Naomi Scott as Jasmine. I’m not usually one for bigging up musical numbers, but Scott’s vocals here are absolutely outstanding. She’s got a classical stage-voice which is bigger than the rest of the film. She's going to be huge and this is a great calling-card.
Ultimately, Aladdin is a very pretty and thoroughly unnecessary way to spend two hours (if you’re a punter) or $183m (if you’re Ian Disney).
It should be awful and it isn’t. I’m absolutely fine with that.
In terms of what Disney took and what they ended up giving, The Jungle Book.
For the spectacle, sure
For the feeling, not so much.
If you've got padawans who are interested, sure.
Let's not get carried away.
Entirely possible, yes.
There isn't. I mean, would it have been too much trouble to drop the Jedha Kyber Crystal Temple into one of the wide-shots? Really? How about a couple of Dewbacks, then?
*1 Full disclosure: I only watched the 1992 version for the first time a couple of nights before seeing this. No previous agenda behind that, it's just the way things worked out over the years. Anyway, the animated film feels rushed in its execution and performances, and frankly not all that. Do not 'at' me. [ 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.
Suicide Squad (2D / SPOILER-FREE)
Cert: 15 / 123 mins / Dir. David Ayer / Trailer
A Preface:
As regular readers will be aware, I'm not a DC-geek in any way shape or form. If anything, I bat for the other side. There's no agenda behind that, it's just the way my childhood/adolescence panned out, and that's the universe I'm at home in. As a result, I'm not familiar with the principle characters in this latest DC ensemble-flick. I know The Joker, of course, and I'm aware of Harley Quinn in the same way that a movie-goer who's never seen Star Wars still has a rough handle on who Darth Vader is*1. But the other members of the team and their assorted handlers, and hangers-on? Not a clue. I'll be honest, it's all I can do to ignore the fact that I'm quite looking forward to a movie that stars both Will Smith and Jai Courtney. That doesn't feel right.
So, with all this in mind, I decided to forego any frantic background reading/viewing in the run-up to Suicide Squad*2, since I believe a movie this early-on in the franchise should be introducing its characters properly to a civilian audience anyway. Also, I did read the faintly disappointing lead-in comic, Suicide Blonde, then decided the film could speak for itself ;)
As usual with a movie of this prominence and audience, my first review will be free of plot-spoilers. If the film really impresses me, we can get into picking apart the story another time…
A Review:
And so, after the queue for much needed coffee-at-midnight, the ads, the trailers, and not one but two post-trailer ads, the BBFC card displayed the words Suicide Squad, and the very respectably-sized audience in Screen 5 exhaled, their (our) wait over.
DC's chronological - if not tonal - follow-up to Dawn of Justice finally swings into our cinemas with all the swagger of unwanted party-guests, but also with the reassuring fun that it's not your party they're trashing. In fact let's be fair: the party needed livening up a little. But I know what you're thinking: 'yeah, what music do they use to open the film though, eh?'
Well, what with House of the Rising Sun, You Don't Own Me and Sympathy for the Devil all making an appearance in the film's first five minutes, it soon becomes clear that all non-orchestrated soundtrack here is going to be the cinematic equivalent of a needy child repeatedly tugging on your sleeve as you try to concentrate on the movie. Ironically, the problem is made worse the more familiar you are with the songs being used, as the connection between on-screen events and the tongue-in-cheek audio accompaniment feels even more tenuous and threatens to pull you out of the film each time*3.
Jukebox aside, with the twin barrels of Viola Davis' narration and stylised flashbacks, the members of Task Force X are individually introduced with sequences whose length correllates almost exactly with the billing position of the actor in question. Will Smith's Deadshot and Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn each get around three minutes of character-building exposition, Adam Beach's Slipknot gets a hurried four-word aside as he walks on-camera. Everyone else is on the sliding-scale between the two, their intro-scenes being a good indicator of how much attention the script is going to pay them.
But of course, the question on everybody's lips is how is Jared Leto's Joker? A mixed bag, frankly. Leto certainly brings a dangerous unpredictability to the character, but I'm not convinced that's what Joker really needs. He's less the scheming maniac here, and more an ADHD Godfather. The best moments with the clown-prince are his quieter ones; unfortunately, they're also the moments when he evokes The Spirit of Ledger. There's also been some concern online as to his share of screen-time. A fair way of putting it would be to say that Mista J is a recurring character here, but not a central one. This is his introduction to the timeline, it's not 'his film'.
And as much as Harley Quinn tries desperately to steal the show (completely in line with the film's marketing focus, to be fair), the most interesting characters here are Cara Delevingne's Enchantress and Jay Hernandez's Diablo. Both go some way towards developing throughout the film*4, both have backstories and motivations which aren't fully fleshed out, and both pay the price of trying to fight for screen-time with a cast this expansive.
Although the plot-mechanics of Suicide Squad are sketchy at best, and the central conceit makes little-to-no sense*5, the film is quite fun. It finally feels like DC are starting to feel comfortable playing by their own rules in the timeline (although the shadow of the Bat looms comfortingly over proceedings, too).
All in all, Suicide Squad is rather good. Although without the pop-soundtrack and misguided one-liners, it would be rather great...
A Post-Script:
Hang around at the end as there's a mid-credits scene, but there's no after-credits, so once the names start rolling up the screen you can make your way to the exits.
If comic-book movies being big and loud is your bag, yes.
In light of the cinematically turbulent time DC's had of late and of the reported reshoots for Suicide Squad, I think it probably does.
No, but that only means the best could be yet to come.
No.
I think there's one buried in the subway-scene, yeah.
Level 2: It's not too long ago that Margot Robbie appeared in About Time alongside old General Hux himself, Domhnall Gleeson.
*1 Not the best analogy, obviously, as the most direct comparison to Vader from an outsider's point of view would be The Joker, not Harley Quinn, but you get the idea. Some characters manage to seep into the mainstream (or at least, wider geekdom) consciousness by force of personality alone; others are General Madine.
*2 Partly because previous comics, cartoons etc wouldn't gel with the continuity of this movie so would probably just make things worse; partly because I've got a lot on at the moment and I just haven't had the time.
3 It's not like these are tracks that the characters can hear in-movie. Most seem to just be there because someone in the mixing department wanted to win a bet; a prime example being "$15 says I can get Eminem's vocally-heavy 'Look Who's Back' laid right over some dialogue!"
4 As much as I enjoyed Suicide Squad, there's little in the way of actual character development here. The film serves to introduce (some of) its players well, but by the time the closing credits appear, most are basically where they were to begin with. Literally, in some cases. It's basically stalling until Justice League comes along. Entertaining stalling, but stalling.
5 Because if you were putting together a black-ops task force designed to have the prowess to "stop a bad-Superman", why would you have it comprising of people who a) don't want to do what you tell them, b) are basically uncontrollable and c) are situated in a completely different timezone? It's hardly rapid-response, is it? Any evil-alien worth their salt will have gleefully committed genocide by the time these cats are scrambled to the chopper. You'd almost think it was a wafer-thin excuse to make a movie consisting largely of loveable villains since DC's heroes tend to be largely uninteresting…
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.
Mea culpa. When I intimated that Michael Winterbottom's Greed was the most self-indulgent mess to land in cinemas for some time, I hadn't considered Bad Boys For Life playing in the screen next door. Coming slightly late to this party, I find myself relieved that at least I didn't rush.
Reader, I seem to have two states of mind when it comes to non-Disney studio animation movies. I'm either viewing the trailer for 
