You've got to hand it to Seth Macfarlane, he knows how to get great value for money from his cinematographer and composer. Michael Barrett and Joel McNeely go to great lengths to make this film look and sound gorgeous. The sets and costumes are in great keeping with the film's frontier aesthetic, and it seems that everyone spent more time on making this feel like A Western™ than they did A Comedy™.
The film seems to have two jokes in its arsenal; 1) someone falls over, and 2) someone says The Fuck-Word where a punchline should be. The envelope of repetition isn't pushed as far as it was with Ted, but at least in Macfarlane's predecessor I could tell which bits were meant to be funny. His follow-up is full (full) of moments which have the pacing of jokes, but none of the content; just an awkward silence afterwards that tonight's audience didn't realise they were meant to be laughing over. Even the central conceit of the title and trailer seems to be forgotten after the first act, once the pedestrian plot kicks into gear. So not really a million, closer to about twelve.
The only part of the film which made me even smile was Christopher Lloyd's scene (and even that goes on for just a beat too long). Although while I'm on the subject, Ewan McGregor, Ryan Reynolds and Jamie Foxx? Yes, that's how you do a cameo. Macfarlane's botox-fuelled gurning aside, the performances are all strong enough, but the material they have to work with just isn't. Poor Liam Neeson looks like he's wishing for a better screenplay*1, while Charlize Theron seems to he hoping it'll all work out in the edit. If this is what's made the cut, I dread to think of the ad-libbed footage which hit the floor.
A solid idea, badly executed, all in all I found aMWtDitW tiresome. Not because of Seth's confusion between wit and expletives, but more that I got bored waiting for the fun to arrive.
There may be A Million Ways To Die In The West, but a laughter-induced rupture doesn't appear to be one of them. I get the joke, it just isn't funny.
The bottle/fence gag works in the trailer but not in the film.
The rest of it doesn't work to the same extent as it doesn't work in the trailer.
I did not laugh.
Not nearly.
You'll probably watch it on DVD/Sky hoping prove me wrong.
I look forward to our conversation, after this.
Only a little.
I'm looking forward to the Special Edition where they put The Jokes in*2.
Pretty sure I heard one, yeah. It was no consolation.
For those of you who've seen the film, would this have worked better with a different leading man? No, that's a serious question.
*1 And Neeson will do pretty much anything, remember?
*2 Although, true to form, there are a number of lines (and even scenes) in the trailer which don't appear in the film. Like they were overloading the comedic content, or something.
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.
On several occasions throughout Blended, Adam Sandler appears to be genuinely inconvenienced that Warner Bros have scheduled a film-shoot in the middle of his budget-deductable holiday. He mopes from scene to scene, each faux-outraged face and forced sheepish grin becoming a mirthless parody of the role that he's the last person to finally get bored of. Between them, Sandler and Barrymore have now traded in any remaining goodwill they built up with The Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates, and are going through the motions in a shamelessly mechanical screenplay full of telegraphed callbacks and Playful Stereotyping™.
Oh, and if you're going to have recurring gags, you need to make sure they're actually jokes to begin with, not just "Woman giggles and shakes breasts. Again".
The natural lifespan of this sort of film is 93 minutes, but Coraci drags the whole sorry affair out to just shy of two hours while the audience get bored waiting for the perfunctory ending. By the time Sandler sings a cutesy ukulele-backed song with the kids over the end credits, you'll be wishing the lions in the safari-sequence had turned on the Jeep-full of lunch that was watching them.
Awkward moments! Sassy kids! A-hole exes! Bitchy best friends! Makeover-reveals! Cameo roles for all the people who had cameo roles in previous films! A bit of pathos (she's dead, you see)!
You've seen it all before; you've seen it all better. A lazy film for a lazy audience.
Fuck it, if Sandler's not going to act like he's interested, I don't see why I should.
Oh yes.
I did not.
The sad part is that it probably does.
Just go away.
....
No. No, I won't.
There isn't.
It still looks better than the Mrs Br*wn's B*ys film though, doesn't 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.
Driving Miss Daisy (The Play)
Cert: 12A / 135 mins / Dir. David Esbjornson
The first thing that becomes apparent in David Esbjornson's adaptation of Alfred Uhry's play, is that Angela Lansbury is having some trouble holding on to that Georgia accent*1. It's not a biggie, but accents are a bugbear of mine, and it goes so far as to derail the generic mid-West accent she gives the rest of the time. In the interests of transparency, I should also point out that I haven't seen the 1989 film which was based on the play (no agenda, I just haven't), and while I'm aware of its themes, this production was to be my first real exposure to the story.
And so, Dame Angela stars as Daisy Werthan, a well-to-do white Jewish widowed teacher in 1948 Atlanta. After a non-injurious car accident suggests that she can no longer handle the vehicle safely, her son Boolie sets about hiring her a driver, in the shape of Hoke Coleburn, an ageing black chauffeur struggling to find work after his previous employer has died. Fiercely independent, 'Miss Daisy' initially rebuts the thought of someone else driving her car, and is mortified at being thought of as stuck-up enough to have her own staff in attendance. The two slowly become companions and ultimately inseparable friends as the years roll on and infirmity takes its toll on them both.
And that's sort of it, really. I know the narrative is set against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement, and while that's referenced in the play, it never seems to become more than a mechanism to show the passage of time; it certainly doesn't carry as much weight as you feel it should and becomes a sort of Elephant In The Room. In fact, rather than a somewhat stilted conversation about Martin Luther King, there doesn't really seem to be any sort of jeopardy in this telling of the story at all. The trust and pride issues seem to be skirted over almost as quickly as those of social unrest.
But, Angela Lansbury and James Earl Jones have magnificent chemistry together, and as a character-piece it's a joy to watch. Boyd Gaines supports ably as Daisy's son, Boolie, and gets enough interaction with his co-stars to showcase his comic exasperation, although the truly laugh-out-loud moments come from Jones. The play's funniest lines are filtered through his baritone voice, often with a wide-eyed incredulity, and you get the feeling that he's certainly having the most fun in his role. The stage sets are minimalist and neatly used (especially the rotating section utilised for Miss Daisy's car), and a projected backdrop works well in tandem with sparse props.
Not quite as dramatic, touching or indeed funny as it feels it should be, Driving Miss Daisy is never less than very-watchable, but there's a feeling that the film which won four Oscars has set the bar above the play's reach.
Use as an accompaniment to the Tandy/Freeman outing, not as a replacement.
Oh, and a special thank you to the Phoenix Picturehouse, Oxford for starting the feature 15 minutes after the advertised time ("satellite problems" was mumbled from the door at the back of the room), so that we missed the beginning of the live Q&A session from the South Bank afterwards, and extra thanks to them for then muting the sound of this Q&A so that the auditorium's muzak could play over the top for five minutes until someone noticed.
It's care and attention like this which bolsters my faith in independent cinemas.
Well, it's not really a trailer per se, but yeah, that's pretty much it.
Not as much as I wanted or hoped.
Not quite.
This version is a DVD.
No.
Possibly, but only in conjunction with the Jessica Tandy film.
It doesn't.
^^ That's a strong four, but a four nonetheless. So much more could have been done with this.
*1 Which surprises me if I'm being honest, because in any episode of Murder She Wrote taking place in the Southern states, she subconsciously begins drawling like Old Gregg at every opportunity.
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.
Humingbird (or Redemption, depending on where you are in the world)
Cert: 15 / 96 mins / Dir. Steven Knight
The general rule of thumb, with Jason Statham movies, is that if he uses his Cockney accent, the film can range from anywhere to alright to quite good, whereas if he's gruffing his way through his nondescript American accent, the range is limited between substandard and kill me now. In Steven Knight's Hummingbird, The Stath™ is in full on Brit-tastic mode as a Troubled™ Iraq war veteran Joey Smith (/Jones), and the film sits accordingly in the somewhere between alright and quite good bracket.
You've got to hand it to screenwriter Steven (Locke) Knight, in that he didn't get too bogged down with the issues of post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and human trafficking. Instead, he seemed to concentrate on Making A Jason Statham Movie, and in that respect Hummingbird is as good as it can be. It's not that The Stath™ completely rescues a mechanically written, second draft of a screenplay, but it certainly becomes more forgivable with him heading the charge. Any character who isn't being played by Jason or Agata Buzek is purely one dimensional (and to be fair, even the leads barely squeeze into two dimensions), and the plot seems to be driven more by luck and coincidence than any real effort on Knight's part.
But, what you see is what you get, and Joey's climactic act of rooftop vengeance at least got a hearty laugh from everyone in the room. Hummingbird may not be a great film, but it's a passable enough Jason Statham film, and that counts for a lot with me.
Yeah. Yeah, it is.
Mostly.
Not quite.
Pay-to-rent, tops.
Nah.
I won't avoid it, but it's unlikely I'll seek it out.
I didn't hear one, but it wouldn't surprise me.
If you were going to be out of your central London flat from February until October, would you really arm your answerphone with that information to tell everyone who phones your landline?
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 'catch-up' review. I watched this film at home, not at the cinema. I saw the trailer for this at the cinema, and I would have seen the film there too, but they didn't/couldn't show it. So now iTunes, Amazon, Netflix and Blockbuster get to reap the rewards of my local's advance-advertising, and I'm sure they're delighted. Now you may say "oh come on, they can't show everything down there", and that would be a valid point if they didn't do things like running Taken 2 for six weeks. Was it that successful? No, I don't think so. Twilight? Batman? Les Mis? Sure, go for it; if they're pulling the punters in then keep making that money. But Taken 2? I ask you. Anyway, this is essentially a DVD review, but still of a new(ish) film. There. I'm glad that's sorted.
• 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.
Director Bryan Singer returns to the mutant fold with the most ambitious X-Men film yet, assembling the veteran cast from both ends of the established movie-timeline. There's a slight weighting towards the McAvoy/Fassbender/Lawrence era of course, but only because the lion's share of the film takes place in 1973.
As time-travel movies go, the mechanism is remarkably simple, both in concept and execution*1, and there's a rather clunky scene early on in the film where 'the rules' are explained in very short words. On the whole, I think it works quite well. Further viewings will tell.
While the X-Men series has never been shy of throwing as many mutants as possible in front of the camera*2, DoFP almost (almost) utilises some restraint in this area. There are comparatively few 'new' characters, and the ones we've already met seem to be using their powers in the context of the story rather than turning up just to showboat for thirty seconds*3. There are many nods to previous entries in the franchise, some subtle, some not-so, and there's a concerted feeling that this is 'X-Men: Generations', far moreso than First Class.
If you've been on-board with the X-Men movies so far, it's unlikely that Days Of Future Past will disappoint. For everyone else, exercise the same caution which you would normally. It's not that there's a high price of entry in terms of existing continuity, but the payoff will be lessened for casual viewers.
The business-end: • What's the 3D like? It's 'there', but whatever.
• Is there a Stan Lee cameo? No • Is there a mid-credits scene? No • Is there an after-credits scene? Yes
I think DoFP's reach might just exceed its grasp, and I genuinely can't decide at this point whether the film is good or really good. I'll side with the latter for now, if only because it's markedly better than The Wolverine in terms of scale and impact. Further viewings will tell.
Pretty much.
Pretty much.
I think it probably does, and I'll talk about that in my next, spoilerific, review.
It's made to be watched big, so cinema.
Nope.
I will.
I didn't hear one. What's the deal with the lack of them this year?.
For those of you who've seen it: A bold move by Fox, or a dangerous folly?
*1 Although while it's straightforward within the confines of this film, the ramifications by the end are headache-inducing, even for me.
*2 With the exception of The Wolverine, obviously.
*3 Yeah, I'm looking at you, Last Stand.
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.
