The A-word.
It's the bane of cinephiles, everywhere.
That book you love; the comic you remember; the show you used to watch; the game you lost an entire summer playing? Oh, someone's adapted it and it's getting made into a movie! Whether a cause for pre-emptive celebration or foreboding caution, it leads to only one thing: expectation. And expectation is the death of the 'clean' movie-viewing experience; no matter how closely the film sticks to its source material, or how much it tries to distance itself, it will be faced with the hurdle of comparison.
And while the movie industry loves the pre-built marketing buzz of 'now a major motion picture!', they loathe the comparative references which will be made from the first review onwards. Because many punters will expect to get exactly the same reaction from a completely different medium, to a story they already know. And therein lies the problem.
In this monthly series, we'll look back at some of the most respected and best-loved properties which have made the perilous journey to the big screen; often with some controversy, and almost always with far too much hype. This isn't so much a review of the films themselves, more an appraisal of their suitability as an adaptation.
As Adaptation speed-runs through the first level of its button-mashing quadrant, there are three reasons why I've specifically chosen to play Super Mario World. 1) This is the game I lost a couple of Summers to in the early 90s (as referenced up there in the introduction), 2) This is the game which introduces Yoshi the dragon, who also appears in the film-version (and so provides the closest chronological influence for the film), and 3) This is the game I've got upstairs with my SNES*1. Hey, path of least resistance and all that...
It's certainly true that the moustachioed plumber was a thing before this particular installment of the franchise, of course. Mario has become to gaming what Darth Vader is to cinema; an iconic figure of the artform, a mainstream touchstone symbolising the progression and durability of the hobby, familiar even to people who've never so much as picked up a game-controller, let alone thrown one down in a fit of pique. The game harks from that golden era where domestically-affordable computing power had raised graphics and gameplay mechanics above the NES and Gameboy limitations, but before the 3D conversion-influx that the N64 inevitably brought.
But Super Mario World. Man, what a game. 96 levels, 24 of which are hidden, and the option of playing through them all linearly or taking secret short-cuts to skip the ones which are stumping you. Much like the London Underground, there's often more than one way of completing your journey (and much like the Underground, the hardened fanatic will take the extra time to visit each station anyway - that's where the fun lies*2). While this isn't exactly sand-box gaming, the ability to hop back through the world-map for power-ups and activate retrospective key-reveals makes the replay value absolutely massive.
Relatively short levels mean a high-level of 'unputdownable' gameplay, as you think 'Okay, I'll just complete this level before going to bed/work/court'. This is the hook of course, as it's rarely that simple. The skills learning-curve is steady, making Super Mario World ideal for younger (and older) players who might find the controller less intuitive. But like all good games, there comes a point where you have to sit up and start really concentrating, or be doomed to fall down the same pit for hours on end.
I've briefly tried other iterations of Mario after this, but the 2D platformer is my preferred format, and the SNES is my preferred presentation.
A fantastic game, as timeless as its hero*3...
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about 1993's Super Mario Bros movie is that at a point between post-production and release, someone watched the whole thing back and still gave it the green light. Bob Hoskins stars as Mario Mario, an American-Italian plumber working out of Brooklyn with his younger brother Luigi Mario (played by John Leguizamo*4). Luigi falls in love with an archeologist named Daisy (Samantha Mathis), and the brothers find themselves on a mission to rescue her when she accidentally falls through a dimensional portal at a dig-site and is captured by the evil King Koopa (Dennis Hopper).
The problem is that other than the character names and a couple of shoehorned references to red/green overalls, the film bears almost no relation to the very property it's shamelessly exploiting as its sole marketing focus. Cinematically notorious as a worst-case-scenario of the game-to-movie genre, it's actually no worse than many other family-oriented adventure flicks of the era. Although they were dreadful as well. And of course the whole world didn't see most of those, since they weren't misguided tie-ins to a globally successful game franchise.
The script is leaden and simplistic (not that it's the worse offender), utilising some manner of 'de-evolution machine' in its story as if the concept of natural-selection had even been in the same room as this screenplay. The way the premise and princess-kidnap-plot are wangled from the pixellated fantasy origins and into 'the real-world' is a bit like when theatre producers go 'yeah, we'll set Hamlet… in space!!', and then leave the original 16th-century dialogue in place so that the whole thing doesn't work. Despite the full-length 99-minute runtime not a lot actually happens here, and what does happen makes little-to-no sense even with industrial amounts of exposition. Oh, and Dennis Hopper's dinosaur-based villain is a actually just middle-age man scowling with excessive amounts of product in his bleach-blonde hair*5. When he's padding around the soundstage representing a filthy, dystopian city, it feels for all the world like Michael Bay got pissed and decided to re-adapt Blade Runner for kids.
Co-directors Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton have a legally-binding credit in the film's opening sequence (laid over the movie itself rather than an inserted-card), yet are somehow not mentioned one single time in the closing reel. Almost as if the traditional attribution had been removed on purpose so that the audience wouldn't be able to scribble down the names of those responsible. The first words to appear in that end-scroll are a nod to Roxette for the closing music. Imagine being so mortified with your own work that you'd dump Roxette in the shit over it. Well, quite.
On a technical level, the sound-mix on my 'remastered' DVD is atrocious with background noise rushing to fill any auditory gaps and then flopping over the dialogue. I can't imagine how bad it must have been in the vanilla-print (not that I'll be hunting it down to find out). This perhaps wouldn't matter so much if the disc actually had a basic subtitle-track but it doesn't and now I can't believe I'm complaining about this like it would have made the damned thing any more bearable*6.
At any point in this film you can stop and ask "right, what's going on again?", and be sure that there isn't an answer.
Super Mario Bros isn't even "delightful hate-watch" bad, it's just crap. The whole endeavour is based on what-iffery. The title-sequence opens with an entire monologue of it. "What if the dinosaurs weren't all destroyed? What if the impact of that meteorite created a parallel dimension? And, hey! What if they found a way back?".
Apparently at no point during the creation of this movie did a producer lean forward and say "…yeah, what if we all don't bother though?"
First things first, I watched the cartoon-segments of this. The 'Super Show' consisted of a live-action Mario Bros sitcom acting as a framing device for animated shorts of the plumbers (and The Legend of Zelda in some episodes). Anything which isn't cartoons is awful. All I'm saying is that 'The Super Show' was the scheduling-name for the combination of everything, but when a Best-of DVD was published, someone decided that 'Best-of' didn't go so far as including any of the live-action segments. But hey, by all means see for yourself. Anyway, I watched a couple of hours' worth of the Mario animations. They're uncomplicated but quite a lot of fun, especially for fans of 1980s animation.
Starring Mario, Luigi, Princess Toadstool and little Toad, each episode is self-contained and takes a theme as the basis for the week's story (Jack & The Beanstalk, Aladdin etc). The first chapter on the Best-Of DVD is Star Koopa, which opens with Mario and gang on a spaceship being pursued by Darth Koopa. Cue the Koopa-troopers in white armour, the transparent equivalent of Carbonite and some non-copyright-infringing (and stun-only) lightsabers. If anything, what would normally be a heavy-handed pastiche works more as an actual homage, due to the visual and tonal similarities to Nelvana Animation's Holiday Special and Droids cartoons. This particular episode is the sort of thing I'd usually hate, but the overall charm of the series pulls it off.
Even with the disposable writing-format restricting any kind of development, and its always-changing, context-free location settings, the Super Mario Bros cartoon still makes infinitely more sense than anything in the 1993 movie...
In the game, no (there's no sampled dialogue), in the movie there's not that I heard (although I was just short of screaming inside my head for an hour and half) and I didn't hear one in the cartoon eps that I watched.
Level 1: The game's character-writer Shigeru Miyamoto was a crewmember on Nintendo's 1996 Shadows of the Empire N64 game, whereas the film-version stars one of TPM's Gungan Guards and the cartoon features the voices of Thall Joben and Vlix from Droids.
That's pretty good-going, all things considered.
*1 An actual SNES, as opposed to the recently-released SNES-mini. No snobbery against the new version (I'm all for it, in fact), but there's not a lot of point in me buying one when I still have a functioning, vintage SNES and all the games I want to play on it anyway. [ BACK ]
*2 FYI, I'm not a train geek, I just love that train geeks exist. In all fairness, I suspect I'm not a train geek because Star Wars got its foot in the door first and I've only got so much disposable cash. As a wise man once observed, 'collectors are like freemasons, but without the handshake...'. [ BACK ]
*3 Yeah I know technically it's heroes and Luigi is available as a player as soon as someone picks up the other controller, but it's not called Super Luigi World, now is it? We all know that Mario's brother is the hanger-on in this partnership. While Mario's doing the skilled work of re-plumbing a toilet-main, Luigi's mopping up the sewage with that slack-jawed expression on his face. No, don't look at me like that, no-one likes Luigi. He's basically Scrappy-Doo in overalls... [ BACK ]
*4 Okay, Bob Hoskins may not be entirely Italian-looking, but John Leguizamo is fucking Colombian. What does this suggest about the casting director? Does the film's artistic license extend to the point where the brothers aren't actually from the same continent, never mind the same mother? And let's not go into the dynamics of a family where there's a 22-year age gap between brothers... [ BACK ]
*5 And okay, the fresh-faced John Leguizamo was only 29 with this movie was released, but Bob Hoskins and Dennis Hopper were actual, established actors by that point. Granted, neither has a perfect decision-making record even outside of Mario Bros (Leguizamo also guilty on that front), but I mean really guys, what the actual fuck? [ BACK ]
*6 The best part? I've actually seen this film before. In 1993. In the cinema. No, really. I don't remember actively hating it, although a nagging disappointment certainly factored into my reactions. But now, enough time seems to have passed that I'd forgotten how bad it could be. Anyway, I am next due to watch Super Mario Bros in 2041. Can't wait. [ 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.
After the adverts, trailers and more adverts have finished running, there's often a moment in the cinema where the whirring, motorised screen-edges widen, taking the aspect-ratio from 16:9(ish) to 2.35:1(ish). When this happens, my brain has one of three reactions. 1) This is as it should be, for the film I'm about to watch. 2) Well that's a pleasant surprise, considering the film I'm about to watch. 3) Get in, 33%(ish) more visible screen-death! There are no prizes for guessing which one of these crossed my mind before I read the BBFC-card for John Wick: Chapter 2…
Now it's not unfair to say that Chad Stahelski's sequel assumes (indeed, requires) that you enjoyed the first movie. In the first act at least, there's very little 'world building' going on and the film basically starts on 10 with a car-chase/shoot-up. A little more background is painted in later, but by then the adrenaline's been pumping so long that it doesn't matter how little sense the plot makes.
Still aggrieved about the can of worms he opened in the first movie*1, Chapter 2 sees retired hitman John owing someone a favour, trying to get out of that favour, repaying that favour and then wishing he hadn't bothered when everybody's trying to kill him. Who'd make an honour-deal with a criminal overlord, eh? Keanu Reeves does his best concerned-face as he relies on old friends and acquaintances to help him out, and the action moves to Italy for Artistic Reasons™ (although not permanently). Floating vibrantly through the air, plumes of blood gently redecorate the walls of Roman catacombs as their ballistic forebears percussively counter them by taking chunks out of the stonework. John Wick: Chapter 2 is a ballet of destruction, fully aware of its own preposterousness but never breaking its poker-face.
As predicted, Reeves' acting-chops don't get any better, but I'm not sure they can now. Luckily, this is one of the rare exceptions where his mahogany-esque acting only adds to the charm of the film. Peter Stormare hams up the opening exposition, Ian McShane returns to chew the scenery in the film's down-time, and there's also some fantastic over-acting from Laurence Fishburne (it's pretty great to see Neo and Morpheus back together again). It's genuinely like a bunch of old friends going 'don't worry Keanu, we've got your back'.
Although the first movie wasn't exactly a passive-aggressive note left on the office-fridge door, the sequel seems to have taken some lessons from Kingsmen as far as the dark-humour is concerned. I found myself cackling at some nameless henchman's demise on more than one occasion. And in terms of the wound-resistant, globe-trotting, anti-hero murderer archetype, the film wipes the floor with the likes of xXx. John Wick hasn't got time excruciating flirting when there are sharply-dressed gangsters that need despatching. The one-hit kills of lesser movies are nowhere to be seen, as Wick double-taps his way through each set-piece, a spray of claret emitting from each insurance shot. Gloriously irresponsible, it's the cinematic equivalent of four pints of diesel and a round of tequila slammers on a Tuesday night.
If you enjoy John Wick: Chapter 2 for no other reason, spare a thought for cinematographer Dan Laustsen, tasked with setting up a prolonged climactic shootout*2 in a maze of revolving mirrors, while ensuring the audience don't see the cameras. Outstanding work, sir…
*1 The first flick saw 84 people buying the farm because some hoodlums killed John's dog. The sequel features 128 people carking it because a photo of John's now-dead wife got burned. At this rate, John Wick Chapter 3 will be Keanu Reeves murdering 250 gangsters because one of them left the milk out on the side before going to work… [ BACK ]
*2 At the point where John gets given a pistol and seven rounds (one for each million-dollars making up the price on his head), I thought 'Oh, is the film about to go a bit Deadpool and show us how economical a killing machine the man can be? Is he really going to get through the finale of the film firing only seven shots?. The film then answered this by essentially saying "Ha-hah, is he fuck". John uses all the rounds on the first foot-soldier he comes across before taking that guy's gun and escalating from there. Restraint? Not in this screenplay, sunshine. [ BACK ]
*3 For reasons best-known only to myself two years ago, I marked the first movie at 5 out of 7, despite having only good things to say about it and nothing but fond memories since. Perhaps I was judging it against the more earnest action-movies which it's clearly not trying to be. Oddly enough, a work-colleague of mine told me last week he'd gone to watch John Wick for the first time in anticipation of the new movie, but gave up after twenty minutes because of the atrocious acting. Whichever way, I marked it 5 so I must have been feeling that at the time. And while it's hard for me to say that Chapter 2 is a "better" film, it's definitely a 6, so there we go. Make of that what you will.[ 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.
For some reason, it wasn't until I sat tonight trying to audibly identify the narrator of Ice Age: Collision Course's opening segment, that I realised how much cosmologist Neil deGrasse Tyson sounds like Seth Rogen. Either would have been a welcome vocal addition to the animated comedy-adventure, but that fact that it's Tyson is definitely cooler.
Yes, everyone's favourite Mammoth-entourage is back*1, and trying to save the earth from an existence-threatening meteor shower (inadvertently caused, in this case, by Scrat the accident-prone sabre-toothed squirrel). The adventure builds gently onto its four predecessors, meaning that while there's a sense of character continuity, this will also be fine as a first or standalone entry for younger viewers. It's fairly amusing, it's fairly charming and the U certificate means it holds no real challenges.
Sadly, this also means that the film doesn't try to work very hard in meeting those 'no real challenges'. There's some fantastic animation and slapstick trying their hardest to prop up an incredibly mediocre screenplay (basically The Croods). In fact truth be told, the silent-comedy segments with Scrat are arguably more inventive and fun than the rest of the film put together. It's a shame that these reels are so few and far apart in the film, really.
The voice-cast is a mixed bag, too, with stalwarts Ray Romano and Denis Leary sounding thoroughly bored with delivering their dialogue, while Simon Pegg, Adam Devine and Jessie J overact to the point of irritation.
At a clock-punching 94 minutes, it feels like damning with faint praise to call a film "inoffensive", especially one of this kind, but that's really the best way to describe it. Collision Course is sweet-natured enough but there's not going to be a great deal there for anyone who's not in the young target-audience demographic (and when you consider that fans of the original 2002 movie will now be in their late-teens, it's odd that there's little to appeal to their nostalgia).
While it's certainly admirable that Ice Age is the first animated franchise to reach five theatrical installments, it kinda feels like this should have been a straight-to-video release…
Well, the other Ice Age films, to be fair.
Only if you've got padawans who simply can't wait.
Not with any particular flair or enthusiasm, no.
Nah.
Nah.
Not that I heard.
Level 1: As mentioned above, this movie's got voicework by Simon 'Dengar/Unkar' Pegg in it.
*1 And you'd think there's be a little more excitement, frankly. There were twenty-five people in the exclusive advance-screening tonight. That's a lower head-count than last week's Independence Day double bill (just), but higher than the X-Men triple. Either way, twenty-five isn't particularly encouraging for the newest installment of an established international franchise. Although it was a 7pm on a weeknight. Although regular preview-showings aren't usually of this genre, there's no getting away from the fact that Collision Courseis a kids' movie, through and through. While the Unlimited Card is available to children, film-ratings mean it's not going to be quite the same value for money (ie monthly-cost vs film-count) as the adults get, so you see far fewer of them on nights like this. Maybe this preview should have been run last Sunday afternoon and allowed paying customers to accompany card-holders? I only say this because one of my esteemed colleagues skipped tonight's showing so that he can see the movie with his son when it opens. Which is entirely understandable.
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.
Sisters Cert: 15 / 118 mins / Dir. Jason Moore / Trailer
A patience-testing, spirit-sapping Universal Studios autopilot, first-draft, by-the-numbers, shout-fest; hurled out of the project-development suite and left to fend for itself in the theatrical wasteland which is 'not Star Wars' in a desperate attempt to claw back some stray revenue from the 2015 holiday season; produced and performed by two comedians who appear to love the sound of their own voices far more than they favour script editorial meetings, and who even seem embarrassed to deliver their own ad-libs - a feature necessitated by them working with only half a script full of enforced wackiness, laboured shrieking and tissue-thin sentiment; the kind of film which begins with a comedically snooty character being made unexpectedly wet by a lawn sprinkler, and ends up with Dianne Weist dropping the C-bomb for no other reason than securing the film an edgy 15 certificate.
A comedy movie for people who enjoy neither comedy, nor movies.
In short, it's not, actually.
£3 bargain-shelf DVD. Which you then give to someone else, unopened.
No, and that's the most insulting thing. Both Poehler and Fey are far better than this, yet they helped create the damned thing, it's not like they're just using it as a vehicle. But y'know what? I'm an equal-opportunities comedy-snob, so more power to them. Because if Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart can get away with trotting out shit like this, I see no reason why the ladies shouldn't undermine their own careers in exactly the same fashion…
Be a boost to egos of its two stars? I imagine it does.
*head*
*desk*
*head*
*desk*.
Not that I heard.
Well, Amy Poehler performed voice-work for Free Birds, as did George 'Lok Durd' Takei.
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, this might be the most fun I've had in Jesse Eisenber's company since Zombieland (although his character here isn't a million miles away from that other). Like some inspired mashup between Clerks and The Manchurian Candidate, American Ultra tells the tale of Mike Howell, a CIA sleeper-agent turned stoner store-clerk as his worlds collide when he's marked for termination by his superiors.
The film's opening scene sees a beaten and bruised Howell (Eisenberg) in a police cell after the events of the story. What follows is a super-fast rewind of the tale, showing snippets of what's going to unfold and robbing the narrative of at least one point of tesion (Howell's survival) in the process; but it also drops plenty of call-forwards in the process and is an early indicator of the fun to come.
Massively entertaining when it's on-fire, and one of the very few stoner-comedies that didn't irritate me on any level (I generally find them quite self indulgent), American Ultra never quite manages to reconcile its dark-streak as the film's characters are drawn primarily for comedy, and the film's second act sags a little when things slow down and move towards traditional thriller territory. It's much better at being an action-comedy than an action-thriller, although the final showdown is almost Matrix-esque in its brutally slick precision.
As funny as the film is, I have to say that many of the gags from the trailer worked better in the trailer, due to the sharper timing. But, if Hawaiian shirts, gunfire, claw-hammers and astronaut-apes are your thing, there'll be plenty for you in American Ultra…
I probably wouldn't go that far…
If you buy it once it comes down to around £7, it'll stand you in good stead for nights in with friends and the mind-altering chemicals of your choice (legal ones, naturally).
Everyone's clearly having a great time, that's what's important (this really isn't a 'performance' film).
It does.
I won't.
There isn't.
Topher Grace starred in 2000's Traffic along with Benicio Del Toro, who's set to make an appearance in 2017's Star Wars Episode VIII.
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.
Super Mario World (SNES)
Super Mario Bros.
The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!
