The thing is, you see, Nickelodeon released a SpongeBob movie back in 2004, which myself and Mrs Blackout got to see by virtue of having a 9yr old nephew who really wanted to watch it. Today however, he's 21, and Mrs Blackout isn't too bothered, so I just had to bite it and go on my own. Well, whatever.
In the undersea town of Bikini Bottom, the secret formula for Mr Krabs' Krabby Patties mysteriously disappears leading to despair and ruin of apocalyptic proportions. Burger-flipper SpongeBob Squarepants vows to retrieve the formula along with Patrick, Squidward and Sandy Cheeks, but the gang find they have to team up with their arch enemy, Plankton for the mission to be a success…
First things first, Sponge Out Of Water is every bit as gloriously silly as you want/expect/fear it to be (delete as applicable). If you think this movie probably isn't for you, it definitely isn't for you (although that's what trailers are for). The film is two-parts 2D animated adventure, and one-part live-action/CGI*1, with Antonio Banderas playing a pirate/cook, and helming a framing device in the form of a storybook which becomes interactive to the point of meta in the final act.
The film is aimed at a young audience of course, but the script is sharp and fast enough to keep the older ones smiling throughout. As well as the regular swath of double entendres which come bundled with the franchise, we also get a Shining reference and even a brush with Douglas Adams courtesy of an omniscient space-dolphin voiced by Matt 'Mighty Boosh' Berry. The film also features the use of a time-machine which, on balance, might actually be implemented better than anything in Project Almanac, and doesn't even make that big a deal about it.
If you're a fan of animation, daft humour and can handle the borderline-migraine that is Nickelodeon's output, there'll be things in The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out Of Water for you to enjoy. I could make a snarky comment about the mix-and-match of 'outdoor' shots which have clearly been filmed on a soundstage, or about the formula-bottle which changes size during the cannonball fight depending on which character's holding it, but it's not really that kind of movie. Oh.
[aside]
When I arrived at my local to watch Get Hard the other day, the gentleman queuing in front of me was buying tickets for SpongeBob. A chap of early-to-mid fifties with a lad of about eight or nine. I only mention the gentleman's age because I couldn't work out if he was the boy's father or grandfather, it could have been either. That doesn't matter in itself, but the guy clearly wasn't in the target demographic for the SpongeBob movie and appeared to be less than enthusiastic (yet not resentful) about seeing it. What I'm saying is, with his look, demeanour and at 6pm on a Wednesday, he didn't appear to be A Saturday Dad, a mantle which could have explained what happened next.
It was the 'Amount Due' on the till-display which caught my attention. I'm used to queuing for annoying lengths of time at the cinema since there are apparently many people who arrive at that counter with no idea of what they fancy seeing, drinking or eating for the next two hours and have given it no prior thought, but this wait seemed to be connected with the till-display.
The adult and child tickets were a given, obviously. A coffee was placed on the counter along with the medium-sized cup of Coke/Fanta/Whatever. Then the youngster came over and put down his bag of pick-n-mix to be weighed. Then a bag of popcorn appeared and a bag of 'luxury' popcorn. Then a hot dog. For real. Whatever had happened, either these two hadn't eaten all day, or the gentleman just wanted to keep his charge quiet for two hours and had decided to spend £35 on a thing to distract him and plenty of things to keep him from chattering at the same time. Although naturally, if it's peace and quiet you're after, The SpongeBob Movie isn't a great starting point.
£35, though. Thirty five pounds. ($52 for those of you on the other side of the pond). That's around £23 an hour. You could get a half-decent plumber out for that. For just the two of them to watch a movie once, and more substandard food-imitation-products than you can shake a sickback at. This guy had weighed up the mid-week options, and had decided (or been persuaded), than SpongeBob was going to be a £35 movie. It's not. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, but it's not worth £35; almost no film is, at least not at a bog-standard, non-premiere showing.
The pair made their way, laden, through to Screen 5 as I got my ticket for a bad Will Ferrell movie in Screen 4 and a coffee. With my Unlimited card covering the showing and giving me a discount, I paid £1.84 on Wednesday evening, although I still suspect I was more ripped off than the guy in front of me in the queue, somehow.
Thirty-five quid.
[/aside]
It's not, really (see above).
If you've got little ones, it's a buyer. For everyone else, a one-off rental should do.
Banderas is comedically fantastic as ever, and SpongeBob is SpongeBob, so yeah.
In spades.
I won't.
Not that I heard, but there is the hawk-screech and an "I have a bad feeling about this" reference.
Well, Mr Krabs is voiced by none other than Clancy Brown, Savage Opress in Star Wars: The Clone Wars. But it's also worth noting that Tom Kenny, the voice of SpongeBob himself, also provided his talents for the Star Wars Angry Birds cinematic trailer..
(The Angry Birds franchise was officially licensed (obvs) and went on to feature the voice of Ian 'Palpatine' McDiarmid, so this is a direct-link in my book; Tom Kenny has worked on Star Wars. No, you shut up.)
*1 Yeah, technically the whole thing is 3D, but I only got to see a 2D showing. I can imagine the live-action sequences look amazing with the CGI characters, but that the 2D animation looks disconcertingly wrong with forced depth. But by all means tell me I'm wrong in the comments.
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.
Now personally, I wouldn't have thought that the seventh part of what is essentially the Top Gear: The Movie franchise would have enough commercial or cultural heft to warrant a midnight showing. Luckily I don't work for Universal who organised one anyway. Being the dutifully enthusiastic cinema enthusiast, I went along in the company of a hundred or so other folks who couldn't possibly wait until normal viewing hours the following day.
Following the events of Fast & Furious 6, Vin Diesel returns once more as Toretto, with his team being hunted by the big, bad brother of Owen Shaw (naturally when you've had an actor like Luke Evans who's pathologically unable to hide his Welsh accent, you'd cast gritty-cockney Jason Statham as the kid he grew up with). Tasked by a US governmental black-ops organisation, Toretto's crew have to retrieve a stolen computer chip and take out Shaw The Elder, spending a ridiculous amount of money on tyres and ammunition along the way.
Directing duties for FF7 fall to horror-helmsman James Wan, and he brings us an incredibly focussed film. It's lighter on the snappy humour than last time around, but that's largely due to Dwayne Johnson's Hobbs being on the bench for the first two acts (and a feeling of relief sweeps over the audience when he suits up for the film's climax). That said, Wan certainly has his work cut out containing Kurt Russell, who can't stop twirling his moustache as the government spook who wants The Maguffin ASAP. The film is even bigger and louder than its predecessor, with the cars and buildings a bit dirtier (with the exception of the Abu Dhabi sequence*1), and many of the previously blue skies being noticeably overcast.
It's still an insane amount of fun, of course, and occasionally is the dumbest Fast & Furious film to date. This is thanks in no small part to Jason Statham, who is simultaneously perfect for the franchise, yet manages to derail the proceedings by being little more than a cardboard-cutout of a bad guy. It's a sight to behold, Statham and Diesel trying to out-stupid each other on the top of a multi-story car park with massive spanners (not a euphemism). By no means on The Stath's list of bad performances, he seems wasted if anything, reduced to an angry cartoon villain by the final reel.
It's good to note that FF7's editing is a lot clearer than FF6's, so that your average viewer can actually tell what's going on during the chase/fight sequences, and features a setpiece where five vehicles are airdropped from a cargo plane, which makes the skydiving sequence from Iron Man 3 look like a school gymnastics display. Long-time F&F writer Chris Morgan knows exactly how these things work by now, of course, and plays to everyone's strengths*2, even if the sought-after computer chip is ridiculously overpowered even by today's standards, and the gift-wrapped bomb on Toretto's porch destroys the entire house but doesn't vaporise the three humans standing unprotected within a 15-foot radius in the other direction. But if I start questioning the internal logic of Fast & Furious movies, I guess I'll get the answers I deserve.
While it's not intentionally a 'grimmer' film, you're constantly aware that this is Paul Walker's final outing. FF7 gives a beautifully fitting sendoff to Walker; warmly sentimental without being mawkish, and it's clear in the film's final moments just how much he meant to his fellow cast members (ie family). Even I'll readily admit that I wiped away a tear as the credits rolled.
Sure, it's formulaic as hell, but when your customers love the product this much*3, why would you go and change it?
Big and loud, it certainly is.
This will be a buy-er.
With the best will in the world, I'm not sure I can go that far.
It certainly does.
Maybe just a little.
There isn't, and it's not good enough.
Well, in addition to the (albeit brief) appearance of series-regular Han Seoul-Oh, Statham's character is named Deckard (cf Blade Runner), and the film features a scenery-chewing turn from Kurt Russell, who of course auditioned for the role of Han Solo. The film's like a love-letter to Harrison Ford, albeit discreetly..
*1 Are there really that many hot women strolling around in bikinis in the city in Abu Dhabi? Because that's not the impression I get...
*2 Well okay, maybe not to Statham's.
*3 This is part seven of a franchise, after all.
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.
So, Fast & Furious 6 may be way too long for its own good (much like the apparent 18 mile runway at the film's climax), and it may have more casual sexism than an entire series of On The Buses, and it may have a plot so thin that you could hold it up and watch TV through it, but when the wheels are spinning and the fists are flying, it's undeniably enormous fun.
And it bears repeating that any movie which features an overt product placement for Seabrook Crisps deserves a misty-eyed respect from those of us on the Blighty-side of the pond.
Bravo.
Obviously not for everybody, and you probably won't get the chance now as this was a part-retrospective double-bill, but if you're a fan? Yes.
It's a buy-er.
I've probably seen each of its prominent stars better elsewhere, I think.
Without doubt.
Nope.
There bloody isn't. Don't worry, I'm going to write a letter.
Well, as it's the 6th F&F movie...
1) The film's bad-guy Luke Evans starred in The Battle Of The Five Armies, as did Sir Christopher 'Count Dooku' Lee.
2) Gina Carano played the central character in Haywire, alongside Ewan 'Kenobi' McGregor.
3) Dwayne Johnson appeared in GI Joe: Retaliation, as did Ray 'Darth Maul' Park (The Phantom Menace).
4) Chris 'Ludacris' Bridges starred in 2009's Gamer, which also featured Sam 'Darth Maul' Witwer (The Clone Wars).
5) Vin Diesel was of course Riddick, which also starred Katee 'Bo Katan' Sackhoff.
6) Paul Walker had a role in 2010's Takers, a film also starring Hayden 'Anakin' Christensen.
Oh, ka-BOOM.
.
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.
There's a secluded storeroom somewhere in the San Fernando Valley, you just know, containing millions upon millions of feet of celluloid featuring Will Ferrell improvising dialogue centered around the word dick. Almost every variation and combination of words in the English language (and some made-up words, too) are put into a seemingly endless juxtaposition of form whilst Ferrell makes The Dick-Word™ the focal point of each line. And yet the two-minute ad-libbed jump-cut assortment we're treated to in Get Hard was considered the best of the bunch.
Get Hard features the aforementioned Ferrell as a successful but gullible stockbroker who's framed for fraud and embezzlement and faces a ten year prison sentence in San Quentin*1. When he mistakenly assumes that a car valet manager (Kevin Hart) has been to prison purely because he's Afro-Caribbean, the struggling business-owner has an idea that just might help them both out of a hole…
So, yeah. Look at that poster. Almost everything you need to know about Get Hard is contained within that frame, and any straggling doubts will be more than mopped up by the trailer. The plot. The methodology. The grinding, faux-awkward tedium of it all. The film is, as expected, an hour and forty minutes of The Black Jokes™, with a brief detour into The Gay Jokes™ to break up the monotony of it all. Hell, director Etan Cohen even manages to combine the two on some occasions. Now in all fairness, it's not that the script is completely bereft of chuckles (or that insincere goodwill which papers over the cracks in this sort of film), but the laughs are telegraphed, laboured and in questionable taste. The language alone earn the film its 15 certificate, but there are also the obligatory dick-shots, just to needlessly reinforce the point.
The odd thing is that the 'tennis court scene', featuring Kevin Hart alternating through an escalating altercation between three imaginary convicts is a rare moment of fantastic writing and performing. When Hart's not shrieking and doing jokes about being short/black/gay, he's rather good, which seems to say more about his choice of roles than his ability in them. Much as Ferrell is proving here, Hart will be stuck at this level unless he can shrug off his image as a market-stall knockoff of Chris Rock.
But as much as I thought the film was lazy, predictable, cliched and reinforced far more stereotypes than it challenged, it ultimately seemed to hold itself in more contempt than its audience. So still better than anything Adam Sandler's done in recent years, then.
By no means a 'cinema-film', even though Get Hard is acceptable fare for a Saturday night with friends and beers, this still doesn't make it good enough. Will Ferrell seems to have peaked and then got stuck halfway down the other side of the comedic mountain, somehow. If this film had been made ten years ago it might have been more forgivable.
But it wasn't.
And it isn't.
Anchorman 2 was the warning shot; Get Hard is a gaping wound...
Oh, be sensible.
Either TV, or wait until you see it for £3 in Asda. If you must.
I should hope not.
I should think not.
Probably not, remarkably.
I didn't hear one, and there are a couple of prime opportunities.
Get Hard stars Craig T. Nelson, who of course provided voicework for 2004's The Incredibles, along with Sam 'Mace Windu' Jackson and John 'Major Derlin' Ratzenberger.
*1"San Quentin? Whoa! You gonna get fucked! …They may as well call that place San Fuckin'!". That's what the 6 (SIX) writers came up with when wanting to refer to homsexuality in one of America's most fearsome prisons. San Fucking. I mean, it's hardly Oscar Wilde, is it? Which is faintly ironic, when you think about it.
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.
