Full disclosure: I wasn't originally going to watch this.
Now, I try to be a good liberal, I really do. Long-term readers will know that my political views (when I occasionally dip into them here) are progressive and the rolling news-feed of the last three years has given me a near permanent stress-headache. Similarly, I like to try and keep my movie-watching as open and inclusive as possible, as I've found great stories in unexpected places while I've been writing this blog*1. But I saw the trailer for Love, Simon a few weeks ago. Its theatrically earnest approach to social and personal angst neatly packaged in emoji-shaped avocado-snowflakes for millennial viewers brought back memories of how angry I got during The Fault In Our Stars and Me Before You. Thus I surmised that this was not going to be the film for me. Fair play.
Then on Tuesday evening, I sat down with a not-inconsiderable number of fellow cinephiles, eager to sample the mystery cinematic goodness of the latest Cineworld Unlimited Secret Screening™, the chain's sporadic series of turn-up-and-see previews. The house-lights went down, the BBFC card came up, and the film's title was displayed to all. Fair play*2. Naturally, I decided to give the movie a crack of the whip anyway, because as a 21st century, teenage coming-out story, Love, Simon is clearly going to have some resonance for our times, and be a contemporary frame for the challenges which younger marginalised groups face on a daily basis. I try to be a good liberal and I'd at least want to like this.
Yet at the same time, it would be an affront to my position as an honest movie reviewer if I didn't say that the first hour or so was one of the most mawkish, toe-curlingly excruciating experiences of my entire life.
That would be those parts of the hour which I didn't miss by rolling my eyes so hard I ended up looking at my own brain. Our eponymous hero (Nick Robinson) is a 17yr old who listens to 80s synth-pop in his car and plays The Kinks on vinyl at home, struggling with the concept of coming out as gay since he's such a hetero-hipster that the rest of the gay community would instantly and rightfully disown him. From his first fumbling flirtations with the gardener (don't worry, that's not expanded upon), Simon's world-view is challenged when one of his contemporaries comes out anonymously, via the school's online messageboard*3. As he enters into an ongoing e-mail exchange with the author, Simon can't work out if he's falling in love or just infatuated - or if the difference even matters. Which is fine, in principle.
But all of this is communicated by a script which comes off like fortune-cookie platitudes have being emptied out of a scrabble bag, then assembled by someone who might well know one gay person, but has never met any teenagers. Not even when they were a teenager. From his overly-sympathetic hippy mother (Jennifer Garner) to his loveable-jock of a father (Josh Duhamel) to his function-free cardboard cutout of a younger sister (Talitha Batemen), nothing in Simon's home life rings remotely true.
Outside of this nauseating family, any sense of intended realism immediately drops through the floor because this a certificate 12A, so none of the kids sneer or swear the way that actual teenagers do. This level of artifice carries over the entire film. While Simon is barely bearable, everyone else is irritating in escalating measure to the point where you think things can't get any worse. Then Tony 'Buster Bluth' Hale blows them all out of the water by playing the sort of school vice-principal who would be murdered by the other teachers before first-break, never mind the students.
And so the story lurches from one obscenely twee suburban exchange to the next, like a Frankenstein's Screenplay fashioned from offcuts of High School Musical*4 and The Secret Diary Of Gaydrian Mole. A chance bit of 'not signing out of the e-mail account specifically created for covertly conversing with the only gay person Simon knows' means that our hero's secret is picked up by a classmate who proceeds to blackmail him. Not because the guy's a homophobe, just because he's a cretin and thinks Simon can put a word in for him with a girl he likes. Simon goes along with this in a half-hearted manner and gets sick of it in the same lacklustre fashion.
And then suddenly, the third-act drama kicks in, the protagonist is unwillingly outed (by the cretin) to his school and family, and Love, Simon becomes a pretty good film (albeit still a heavy-handed one). This could be because the central themes broaden in both their focus and execution, or it could be because that's when the screenplay has more to focus on than patronising its cast and audience. The tension as Simon's hand is forced in developing the confidence he'll need for the future is one of basic human emotions; anger, shame, trust, acceptance. Scenes with his family which should be all rights be cloying are handled with a sense of reassurance, and there's the thought that this section of the film is where the real life-lessons lie.
Then there's just time for ten minutes of reverting to cinematic type. The 'making-up' of high school friendships awkwardly does the rounds and culminates in Simon's emotional blackmailing of his e-mail-writing friend, effectively forcing him to out himself in front of everyone or continue living in secrecy and its associated shame. Because it didn't do Simon any harm and these are the kind of sweeping generalisations the film is happy to make in its closing moments. Delightful.
In an age where films like Moonlight and Lady Bird exist, Love, Simon adds little of substance to the cultural zeitgeist. And it doesn't even do that well.
I try to be a good liberal, but that doesn't mean passively accepting anything with "issues!" stickered on the box in massive letters.
And as much as I may have taken against Love, Simon, at least I'm not the two guys who walked out five minutes into the movie when they realised what it was going to be about. Or the guy who left alone five minutes after that...
If you enjoyed The Fault In Our Stars then you'll probably be thoroughly engrossed by this.
This is not a £10+ film.
Stream it, tops.
It's not.
I doubt I'll have the strength to argue about it, but let's see.
There's not.
Level 2: Jennifer Garner's in this, and she was in 2009's The Invention Of Lying alongside Fionnula 'Catarine Towani' Flanagan.
*1The Greatest Showman can do one, though. As can Fifty Shades. Got to draw the line somewhere. [ BACK ] *2 I'll be honest I was expecting Tomb Raider. That film was out on general release the next day anyway, but Cineworld have previously previewed Dawn Of The Planet of The Apes less than 48 hours before it was due out. But I digress. [ BACK ]
*3 Do these school-specific sites even exist in the age of Facebook? Or is it another thing made up by someone in their forties who thinks they're down with the kids? I ask that as someone in their forties who has neither the time nor patience to be down with the kids. [ BACK ]
*4 Oh, and massive props to the movie for still including a fantasy song-and-dance number, when it's very evident that our leading actor Can. Not. Dance. [ 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.
Nine Lives (SPOILERS)
Cert: PG / 87 mins / Dir. Barry Sonnenfield / Trailer
Despite being a great devotee of all things cinematic, I don't really keep up with the 'showbiz news' side of the media. Tales of woe come and go, and unless they make it onto the 'actual' news or are scandalous enough to turn up in my Twitter feed, I don't really hear of them. As a result, I cannot imagine what financial apocalypse has occurred around the Academy Award winning actor Kevin Spacey that he'd sign up for this. Christoper Walken and Jennifer Garner's names on the cast list surprise me not one jot (they'd go to the opening of a fridge), but Spacey? That poor, poor man.
And so, the aforementioned trio autopilot their way through a Frankenstein body-swap morality tale, assembled from the disembodied tropes of every other one before it. Kevin Spacey is a slightly mean businessman (not like Ebeneezer Scrooge mean, just a bit grumpy like most middle-aged men tend to be) who is zapped into the body of a cat during a lightning storm after his daughter's wished for a cat, to teach him the error of his ways! And to get him to bring dead mice and birds in from the garden for his family more often. Or something. Naturally, hilarity ensues because cats are inherently comical creatures. Garner plays his unlikely borderline-trophy wife, Walken plays the wise old man in the pet shop (not at all like the old man off of Gremlins), and Malina Weissman plays his daughter: the kid-character in a kids' film who is largely ignored by the screenplay.
The film actually begins passably enough, Spacey playing his role with some amount of pantomime gusto, at least. But once he inhabits the cat's body (the point of the film, remember), the whole thing seems to grind to an embarrassing crawl. Without the facial reactions or physical acting to back it up, Spacey's laconic inner monologue comes off as abject boredom, as even the central premise of man-in-cat isn't mined for any sense of uniqueness or novelty.
One can only assume that the budget for this movie went on the cast and the (relatively well-rendered) CGI cat, because the rest of the film looks like a cheap TV-movie. Which is fine if it happens to be on your TV and you haven't actively paid to watch it. Because that's really all it's good for. Although even kids*1 are more discerning than this.
The most insulting aspect of the whole film is how unconvincing the 'be a better person' schtick is handled. It's not like there isn't a new interpretation of A Christmas Carol every other year; there are plenty of examples out there. If you need (or indeed, get) any kind of guidance from Nine Lives, you're already in a position where no film can save you.
…and the cat dies in the end.
They try and act like it doesn't, but we all know it does.
13 Going On 30 and YouTube cat-videos.
No.
No.
No.
…no.
No.
Level 2: This film stars Kevin Spacey, who also appeared in 1988's Working Girl alongside Harrison 'Solo' Ford.
All roads lead to Han, today.
*1 And even as I type that I know I mean "especially kids". You might not like much of what they enjoy, but they're far more choosy consumers of entertainment than adults.
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.
Disney don't seem to have much confidence in their family-comedy, Alexander and the Title Which Is Too Cumbersome and Unwieldy To Be Actually Memorable. Released in the UK just after the half-term week, and with a contractually-watertight minimum of fuss, you get the impression that they've already given up on hoping it's going to make money, so they've just shoved it out to fend for itself. I watch more Kids' Films™ than most adults (especially considering I'm not a parent), and even I've only seen the trailer for it once. This might be understandable if the film wasn't based on a very well known children's book, and if Disney hadn't paid Hollywood mainstreamers Jennifer Garner and Steve Carrell to star in it. But y'know, it is and they have.
It might also be understandable if the film was rubbish. That's not the case; it's really rather good.
It's always a live-action Disney Family Comedy™ of course, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, and I can't dislike any protagonist who wears a Star Wars t-shirt in their first full scene (subliminal marketing from The Mouse, there?). Opening with a brief, third-act mid-carnage wraparound, before resetting the film's clock to 'the previous day', AatTHNGVBD*1 has a surprisingly slow build-up for such a short film, although it's this build up which allows young Ed Oxenbould to shine as the titular Alexander Cooper. He's a fantastic, expressive actor; with a deadpan subtlety that reminds me of Paul Rudd's better roles, and does quiet exasperation better than many adult comedy actors. Along with the rest of the young cast however, he's sometimes let down by a clunky script; almost as if the kids' dialogue has been written by adults who have heard of children, but never met any.
The film's adult characters (so, largely Jennifer Garner and Steve Carrell) fare better with feeling more suited to their lines, even if they're far more twee than those of their young counterparts. The film really belongs to the youngsters. Carrell is great as usual, and while Garner gives a more-than-acceptable performance, she's ultimately quite forgettable (although maybe that's down to the character). The unevenness of the script could be because we're seeing everything from Alexander's point of view, of course, and this is how he views and experiences his contemporaries. Or it could just be slightly shonky writing for a live-action family comedy.AatTHNGVBD*2 seems to be a stronger movie once the carnage of the second act and "The Very Bad Day" kicks in, although this is at the price of having Alexander become a bystander, watching his family become enveloped in the bad luck he's become inured to.
It's also worth noting that the reason the Cooper family have the worst day of their collective lives, is a benignly petulant wish made by young Alexander on the eve of his birthday, fed up after a crappy day at school. Considering this is the backbone of the story (and considering this is a Disney film we're talking about), this plot-point is all but buried, so the realisation, apology and redemption at the end of the film loses some of its weight. That doesn't matter too much, though, because for its execution and target audience, AatTHNGVBD*3 works very well indeed. Keep in mind that if this film was a 15 Certificate, it'd star Jason Segel as Alexander and he'd be saying the fuck-word every third line; other than that it'd be almost unchanged.
A very amiable comedy for those who don't mind a saccharine binge every now and again, what Alexander And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day lacks in marketing prowess it more than makes up for in spirit. Ed Oxenbould has a great career in comedy ahead of him, and you'll have seen mainstream comedy flicks this year with far fewer gags than there are here.
It captures the comedy of the film, but not the heart.
Pretty much, yeah.
Probably, but I still think there's a more connective film to be made here.
This is a DVD for a Sunday afternoon.
Nah.
At some point, but it's not really re-watch material for my demographic.
Didn't hear one.
Come on, when was the last time you saw a Disney™ family movie where someone (and a human, not an animal) pisses on the kitchen floor for comic effect?
*1 I'm pretty sure this is what all the cool kids are calling it.
*2 This is what the cool kids are calling it, I've checked.
*3 No, you shut up. You give me a better movie title and I'll give you a better acronym.
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.
I've got to hand it to Matthew McConaughey, he's turning out some great performances these days. Leading up Dallas Buyers Club, he portrays Ron Woodroof, a cowboy, hustler and general ne'er-do-well diagnosed with HIV in 1985, just as the condition was grabbing the headlines. Unable to receive either effective medication to alleviate the symptoms (or even reliable information on medication) through official channels, he begins to import "unapproved" drugs and supplements to help others like him, under the constant eye of the authorities.
While McConaughey plays Ron as likeable, he's very careful not to go so far as to make him outright loveable. Dealing with a Robin Hood-type figure, it would have been easier to make the movie massively sentimental; but emotional as it gets, Woodroof retains some of his sharper edges, and is far more interesting for it. Threatening to steal the show at any moment is Jared Leto as Rayon, an HIV-positive pre-op transgender woman who helps Rob find customers for the meds, and ultimately helps run the 'buyers club', all the time battling demons of her own. In any other film, Leto's would be the stand-out performance, but restrained direction and excellent performances from both Leto and McConaughey make it more of a shared stage. Jennifer Garner supports ably as a nurse torn between her professional ethics and doubting the tactics of the FDA, but I'm not sure this is the right part for her (or the part's been under-written a little, I'm not sure). Then again, there's so much emoting between Ron, his hick former-friends and family, and Rayon, that there's actually very little for Garner's Eve to add.
And yet, as fantastic as the film is, it does start to sag under its weight in the second hour. It's not that the film is too long, just that the most compelling parts are in the first two acts. The ending seems robbed of the depth it should have because it's dragged its heels in getting there. And yes, I know exactly how insensitive that sounds. I'm aware that the dramatic elements of the film are directed by the real-life events behind them, but director Vallée seems to lose the pacing once the finish-line's in sight.
Largely.
Mostly.
Certainly.
Despite being screened in 2.35:1, it's not especially cinematic, so it may be a night in for you. But if you want to see it, don't hesitate.
A little.
I doubt I'll seek it out, but I certainly won't avoid it.
There isn't.
Why didn't the FDA and the police shut Ron down sooner? They didn't seem to pull any magic card out of the hat when they did intervene, and it's not like he was keeping it a secret?
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.
