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.
Ah, the evenings are getting lighter and Steven Spielberg returns as only he can, with a sci-fi adaptation that will completely reinforce audiences' existing opinions on Ernie Cline's source-novel. People who loved reading Ready Player One will get a lot out of this cinematic rendering, while those who were 'less enthusiastic' will see their list of gripes brought to three-dimensional life. Anyone who hasn't read the book will see both the pros and cons which others have discussed, and probably develop a headache around twenty minutes in which lasts until they go to bed. Feel free to guess at this point the category into which your humble correspondent falls...
So our digital hero's journey begins in 2045 and follows Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), aka Parzival in the virtual reality/internet hybrid known as The Oasis. Wade spends his free time hunting for Easter eggs throughout the virtual realm in the hope of winning the grand prize - ownership of the system and half a trillion dollars. Teaming up with fellow adventurer Samantha/Art3mis (Olivia Cooke), the pair form a team to liberate The Oasis from the hands of Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn)'s megacorporation IOI, who want to take final control of the game and its participants.
First things first, I didn't dislike this. I feel that's worth pointing out because of everything I'm about to say. Ready Player One certainly can't be faulted for its ambition. The execution however, is another matter. In a very real sense, this is a CGI-animated piece with live-action segments, and the visual effects work and sound design is outstanding all round. That said, it'd be even better if the whole thing would slow down long enough to get a proper look at anything. Even with its rare quiet moments, there's barely a static camera throughout the entire movie.
And it's this frenetic pace which bleeds over into a hastily presented plot setup, as we race from one set-piece to the next, with unintroduced characters reciting industrial amounts of exposition (all the more notable, in a film which basically makes no sense*1). With a runtime of over two hours, Ready Player One is like being waterboarded with Sunny Delight while Peter Kay repeatedly bellows "d'you remember the 80s?"*2 over a blaring synth-rock jukebox soundtrack…
Because the centrepiece of the buzz and attraction around Cline's work, for better or worse, is its array of pop-culture references. While the film is clearly delighted with the Warner Bros, Ambin, Capcom and 20th Century Fox properties its been able to secure the rights to, others are notable by their absence. Marvel's superheroes can be name-checked, but we only see DC's. This could well be for the same mouse-related reason that the definitive movie about nostalgia and iconic pop culture doesn't have any Disney characters in its arsenal, and while the script mentions "padawan" and "Millennium Falcon", visual Star Wars references are buried deep within the noise*3.
It's entirely possible for a movie to depict a chaotic environment without itself devolving into chaos. Ready Player One hasn't nailed it, though. That's not to say that the action is particularly convoluted or difficult to follow - Cline's story structure itself is truly worthy of the Spielberg treatment. But the white-noise approach to the production values, coupled with dubious casting choices*4 threatens to make the whole thing feel like... well, like watching someone else play a game for two-and-a-bit hours. I'm genuinely sad to say that I was pulled out of the film at several points by the thought '...am I supposed to be caring what happens to these characters?'. Which is unheard of for a Steven Spielberg flick.
Ready Player One isn't nostalgia, it's a fan-service simulation of it - which is the point, after all. The metaphors about online and gaming communities were always going to feel heavy-handed in a story about online and gaming communities, but the final product also lacks that sense of eye-widening wonder which Spielberg has effectively written the book on, over the last four decades. All I got here was a sense of overload.
There's a point in the first act where Parzival stands at a mirror and asks "...does it look like I'm trying too hard?". This is a crystallisation of the whole film.
It feels like a cop-out to say Tron and The Matrix, but Tron and The Matrix...
If you watch it at all, the cinema is the place to do so, yes.
This is so visually dense that it lends itself to rewatching, and in the highest definition possible.
Okay, let's not go mad here.
Nope.
Yes. It's in the first five minutes and it's pitched down an octave or so.
*1 Mendelsohn's evil corporate overlord shtick feels for all the world like Agent Smith in The Matrix, if Agent Smith couldn't actually control anything in The Matrix he's meant to be in charge of so just ran around after Neo shaking his fist. [ BACK ]
*2 Although at one point when Parzival rips out a Saturday Night Fever sequence in a club, Art3mis responds with "woah, old school!. Even though that's only six years older than all the 1983 references the film is so in love with, which at the time of the story taking place is sixty years previously anyway. Like nostalgia began in 1980 and ended in 1995. [ BACK ]
*3 That said, Parzival's belt/holster looks an awful lot like Han Solo's ANH one, but with the Thundercats sigil etched into the buckle-plate. If only the rest of the film was this subtle with its referencing. [ BACK ]
*4 Full disclosure, I can't warm to Tye Sheridan. I'm sure he's an accomplished actor, I just haven't yet seen him in anything where I've enjoyed the performance. In Ready Player One, the live-action Wade manages to be more unlikeable than his outlandish digital alter-ego, Parzival. Which is quite something. Simon Pegg brings his own unique brand of insincerity to the film, plus Mark Rylance is overacting. Again. These are strange days when Olivia 'mahogany' Cooke manages to be one of the best performers in a movie. [ 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, Gary. The make-up's good, but your Alfred Hitchcock-voice needs some work, mate. As January continues to raise everyone's expectations for the year ahead and bring us All The Worthy Films, we find ourselves once again back in May 1940. The Second World War rumbles on, nervous glances abound in UK parliament and there's barely a likable person left in the country. Apparently. Yes, it's Darkest Hour, the brooding political thriller from the director of 2007's Atonement starring Gary Oldman as Prime-Minister-of-the-moment Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill, Kristen Scott-Thomas as his long suffering wife Clemmie, Lily James as his more-recently-suffering secretary Elizabeth Layton, and a wide range of Him You Saw In That Thing performers as various members of the British government and military.
And I wish I'd enjoyed it more.
Oh, the film's got pedigree, though. Pedigree coming out of its ears. But from the excess of desaturated wooden panelling, wry acerbic gags*1 and furious imperialistic bickering, Darkest Hour begins like a car crash between a Richard Curtis melodrama and a Brexiteer's wank-fantasy. This is the gear it stays in, more or less, throughout. The primary problem is, where do you take the story of a man whose life has been chronicled (obviously and rightly so) extensively since 1945? The apparent answer is to make this depiction slightly less-than-flattering, and it's to director Joe Wright and writer Anthony McCarten's credit that neither shies away Churchill's reputation as an unrelenting a-hole, one who apparently succeeds by shouting down his adversaries rather than using tactics, skill and stoic determination. Unfortunately, most of the film's other characters are also cut from the same cloth. This is effectively two hours of people grumbling then yelling at each other, at least one of whom you know for a damn fact was absolutely right in doing so. But hey, we can't change history.
Not that I'm an expert in the field, by any means. I didn't know the full ins-and-outs of the situation before sitting down in Screen 1, yet I still wasn't surprised by anything I saw there. The film is an easy target for raking in the grey pounds, and one which throws few challenges at an audience (unless you count the aforementioned unlikeability, of course). A few attempts are made at humanising the statesman, but they feel like spurious anecdotes which have morphed over the years into a party-story nobody believes any more*2. Wright's direction is certainly more delicate than Anthony McCarten's writing, although obviously these play off each other. The film lacks the quiet introspection of Wright's work on Atonement, but then the sceenplay's not there to support that, anyway.
The next speedbump we hit is that since the story follows Winston from his appointment to the office of Prime Minister in early May to right before the Dunkirk evacuation in early June, the entire audience can just knows That Speech is being saved for the film's crescendo. So like the sinking of the Titanic, that's all everyone in the room is waiting for. And, as mentioned, this is all accomplished with great gusto and absolute conviction but the film never feels like it's shining a new light on its subject. Whereas Dunkirk at least played with the narrative form and raised tension accordingly, Darkest Hour feels more like a dramatised documentary. All that's missing is intercut shots of David Starkey pacing around Whitehall with an ongoing narration.
There's some great photography, some great performances, and the whole thing generally failed to interest me. I have to accept, of course, that all my niggles with the film are entirely intentional on the part of the film-makers, and this is just Not The Movie For Me. Gary Oldman is, as reported, very good*3.
The best bit comes in one scene where Winston's dictation to his secretary tails off, and around a minute later she bashfully admits "...I didn't understand you sir, you were mumbling".
We need more of this exact character in films starring Tom Hardy and Jeff Bridges, please.
This film wants to get off the tube at the same stop as Dunkirk, but ends up walking up the stairs just ahead of Their Finest.
If you like stirring tales of That Sort Of Thing, I imagine it is.
Only the hardcore will want to keep this on the shelf for re-watching.
Put it this way, if (as is being rumoured) Gary Oldman finds himself nominated for the Best Actor Oscar, I think he should only be allowed to pick it up if he does so in-character.
*1 With the delivery of these laboured witticisms and the requisite knowing-chuckle from the audience, I exhaled a little further each time. [ BACK ]
*2 At one point Winston Churchill decides - on a script-signposted whim - to ride the London Underground for the first time. "How do I get to Westminster?" he inquires, perusing a Tube-map.
"District Line east, one stop", says the young woman next to him. Somehow managing to not add "Are you a tourist? You're in the centre of London mate, that's walking distance. Like, it's less than half a mile. Even a fella in your shape could do that in five minutes. You'll be covering more distance by hoiking down here, getting onto the train then going up at the other end. And that's not taking into account how long the train is going to inexplicably wait on each platform while you apparently discuss government policy with the filthy proles. 'Loose lips', and all that. 'Sir'.", before rolling her eyes and deciding to get the bus instead.
Oh, and during that tube-scene, where (apparently) the actual Prime Minister of an actual country at actual war bolsters his own gut-feeling by getting the hasty. self-righteous opinions of half a dozen strangers with no objective view of the situation, I may well have broken The Code by mumbling "Oh fuck off" even louder than I did during the 'I am Spartacus' bit in The Commuter. Like I said, the film's A Bit Brexit at times, which is faintly ironic given how committed its protagonist was to the European ideal.
[ BACK ]
*3 But then why wouldn't he be? He's Gary Oldman. Why are people so surprised at this? [ BACK ]
*4 In this context, it almost certainly is. THAT DOESN'T MAKE ME WANT IT ANY LESS. [ 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, hi. As with last time, I've made you some Skittlez character-posters, in lieu of actual words. That said, I'm half-way through drafting another set of nitpicky observations, and it looks like my local may well have stopped showing Rogue One after this weekend. In which case, I'll just have to post them up under their own steam at some point. But until then, pictures!
[ Click for Big (opens in new window) ]
I've got more of these to come, too. So there'll definitely be some sort of mop-up post to wring the last out of Rogue One.
In the words of Baze Malbus, "You're welcome…".
All of The Star Wars.
Yep.
It does.
It's a strong showing.
Nope.
Yep.
Level 0: It is Star Wars.
Although if you really wanted to go the long way round with it…
Rogue One stars Alistair Petrie, who appeared in the first episode of the 2013 TV drama The Escape Artist, as did a certain David Tennant, who of course headlined Casanova, along with Rose Byrne, who rocked up in 2004's Troy alongside Julian Glover, an actor who was in the 'Arthur's Bane' episode of Merlin, which also boasted Lindsay Duncan, who had a role in An Ideal Husband, a film that featured Oliver Ford Davies, who also starred in the 1997's Mrs Dalloway, along with Alistair Petrie from Rogue One…
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.
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?'.
