Hot on the tail of some less-than-stellar publicity comes Sausage Party, the all-animated comedy from the minds behind Bad Neighbours and This Is The End. And yeah, they're films I didn't particularly love. Luckily, it's also from the minds behind Superbad; a movie chiselled into my all-time top ten. I may moan about some of the crap they churn out, but I do have a lot of time for Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. And who doesn't want to see a film with a swearing frankfurter, right?
Life in the supermarket is pretty rosy for the groceries. Every day is spent gleefully hoping they're chosen by the gods and taken into The Beyond, to be looked after forever more. But when a returned jar of Honey Mustard tells Frank (the frankfurter, Rogen) and Brenda (a bun, voiced by Kristen Wiig) of the awful fate that awaits them beyond the automatic doors, the fabric of their belief-system is torn apart as they have to fight to escape, to survive and to convince the other groceries to work together for an uncertain freedom rather than accept an assured doom…
Yes, it's that heavy-handed. It's funny, but not at all delicate. The film has three levels of gag in its arsenal. 1) Food-puns and dick-jokes, often combined, 2) Broad racial/cultural generalisations based on the origin of any particular food, and c) Socio-political and socio-religious satire. This is all well and good in itself and executed with the subtlety (and accompanying foul-language) you'd expect. But the screenplay has already reached the third rung of its ladder by the end of the first act, meaning everything which follows is just rehashing the same points, but more loudly each time.
Tonally, the film is a little like a 22-minute South Park episode that got out of hand. The animation's great, the voice-work is mostly seamless in tandem with that, and the film holds the audience's attention throughout. While this will be a great film to watch with some friends after getting in from the pub, there's not enough there to warrant re-watching in the future. Superbad has a surprisingly soft-centre, but this is hard-candy all the way through.
Sausage Partyis consistently funny, but it's nowhere near as clever or insightful as it repeatedly thinks it is; just the effortless master of the single-entendre…
South Park: The Movie is its closest spiritual cinematic relative.
Only to marvel at the high-res texturing.
There's nothing else that won't work equally well at home.
Oh, probably.
Nope.
Nope.
You bet your ass, there is.
Level 1: Bill 'BB-8' Hader's on voice-duty here.
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.
No film with UB40 on the soundtrack should be this much fun. I mean, it's only the briefest of audible appearances from R*d R*d W*ne, but it was enough to get my back up straight away. The rest of the soundtrack is nicely eclectic in a way which isn't trying too hard (Suicide Squad, take note), but is also largely unpredictable. And in that respect, it fits the film quite well.
The True Story*1 tale of two unlikely arms dealers sees Jonah Hill and Miles Teller playing their exaggerated roles surprisingly straight (to the credit of both), as they manage to land a legal (if morally questionable) US military weapons-supply contract, which they end up fulfilling without morals or legality. The story is narrated retrospectively by Teller's character, David, so we know that he makes it to the end. For everyone else though, all bets are off.
Without knowing anything of the facts behind the case, I enjoyed it very much. Both of the leads are inherently watchable no matter how obstreperous their characters become, and while you're never completely on their side, you'd much rather see them succeed than fail. The film feels longer than its 114 minutes, but there's little downtime in the tale of escalating danger and administrative oversight. This is also beautifully shot; there are visual nods to Tarantino's early movies, and the Miami setting (when the story is taking place in the US) is deliberately reminiscent of Scarface. Although as the film goes on, it becomes clear that rather than passing a flirtatious note under the desk, writer/director Todd Phillips has penned a flat-out love letter to De Palma's greatest creation (right down to that poster at the top of this review). Hey, I love Scarface too, so it didn't bother me.
Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that War Dogs will get the exposure or recognition it deserves, because it appears to have been marketed largely as a comedy (Hill and Teller are both great comic actors, of course, and director Todd Phillips' Hangover connection has become his default epithet). While there are certainly laugh-out-loud moments in the movie, they arise from the absurdity of situations rather than scripted gags, and it's not really the chortle-fest some audiences might be expecting. Tonally, this is closer to The Wolf Of Wall Street (also fantastically funny in places) than any of the frat pack comedies it's borrowing the principal cast from.
A colourful movie painted entirely from grey-areas, War Dogs is better than you're probably expecting it to be…
For the cinematography, yes.
The story can be watched at home, though.
I think it just about does, although the film's pacing is often its own worst enemy.
Not quite, but everyone involved with War Dogs should be proud.
I won't.
There isn't, but there are a few boot-shots in there.
Level 2: Well, Miles Teller was almost Han Solo but that ain't close enough, so let's go for Jonah Hill who appeared in Django Unchained, as did Sam 'Windu' Jackson.
*1 The words 'based on a true story' are usually a millstone around the neck of any movie, but any eyebrow-raising absurdities in War Dogs feel completely in keeping with the military and governmental organisations the lead duo are dealing with.
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, Joel and Ethan strike again, and masterfully, confounding the expectations I didn't even realise I had. Although I'd watched No Country For Old Men on its release, it wasn't until 2014's Inside Llewyn Davis (a film which baffles and beguiles me in equal measure to this very day) that I realised I'd never really latched onto the Coen brothers' work. While I still haven't digested the entire back catalogue, I thought I'd now seen enough of the classics to get a better handle on where they're coming from. To say that Hail, Caesar! wasn't the movie I was expecting isn't entirely fair, but it's not completely the tight, zippy caper that the trailer was selling either. And I only say all this because the Coens are, by this point, in a position to release exactly the film they want to be seen by audiences, produced and finished to their own standards. In short, I'd like to think that anything in this movie I didn't really 'get' was down to me alone. Although I still don't think that's the case...
Set in 1951 during the tail-end of Hollywood's golden-age, Hail, Caesar! follows Capitol Studios head 'fixer' Eddie Mannix, a man desperately trying to corral the studio's talent into behaving on-and-off camera and keep tinsel-town's press and gossip-columnists at arm's length, all the while struggling to make time for his domestic life and weigh up a lucrative job-offer from a global arms manufacturer. When the studio's most prominent A-lister, Baird Whitlock is kidnapped and held to ransom, Mannix has to pull strings and lean on contacts to retrieve him; and it's these twenty-seven hours that we spend in his company while he does it…
Throughout all of this, Hail, Caesar! is imbued with an impatient air clearly intended to come off as chaotic-farce, although it feels more like a general lack of focus. With the kind of casting we saw in Wes Anderson's Grand Budapest Hotel, a raft of tertiary characters are introduced which hang around too long to be cameos, but aren't written fully enough to be supporting roles (in fact, only one of these gets any real ending at all, the rest seem to be abandoned or given closure with a line of someone else's dialogue).
In much the same way that MGM's Singin' In The Rain was a film purposely assembled from disparate songs and set-pieces, there's almost a suspicion that Universal commissioned the Coen Brothers to make a comedy from sketches and ideas that were already lying around in one form or another. Although the movie just about works as a whole, some elements (and casting choices) work more smoothly than others, and there seems to be half a potential classic in there needing more development.
But there are some outstanding scenes in the film, the highlight of which for me was Ralph Fiennes and Alden Ehrenreich holding a script discussion which borders on Stewart Lee-levels of testing the limits of an audience's patience (I found it increasingly hilarious, the rest of the audience seemed to grow conversely irritated; complete with a punchline several scenes later which my fellow patrons didn't seem to acknowledge. The danger of being a comedy-snob, I'm afraid). When the script is sharp, you could shave with it; the rest of the time it kind of bumbles along amiably.
On an entirely personal level, I'd have enjoyed the film a lot more without Michael Gambon's narration pulling me out of the experience every twenty minutes or so. Partly because he's being the same Michael Gambon™ that he uses for his advert-work, devaluing the artistic currency of his CV with every smug utterance, but mainly because he needlessly narrates exactly what we're watching on-screen anyway...
By no means a failure, Hail, Caesar! is watchable enough but doesn't have the drive or insight we know the Coens are capable of. The film is a bit of a curiosity, and sometimes a bit of a mess.
Although I'll freely admit that it's a bit of a mess which I'll probably get more out of when I watch it again...
Grand Budapest Hotel, My Week With Marilyn, Singin' In The Rain.
Only if you're a purist, although both the film's setting and its setpieces are a glorious homage to cinema itself.
I'd say not quite, your mileage will vary.
It isn't.
I won't.
There isn't.
Level 1: Hail, Caesar! stars none other than Clancy 'Savage Opress' Brown.
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.
Writer and director, Dean DeBlois has gone to a lot of trouble to craft this sequel as closely to its 2010 predecessor as he can; to the point where every scene centered between young Hiccup and his dragon, Toothless, feels like one of the best things you've ever seen, and all the others are surprisingly mediocre by comparison. That's not to say that HtTYD2 isn't a good film, but you get the feeling it could be even better with more attention paid to the other characters.
The only reservations I have about this second installment are the same as before; the character design of the humans isn't anywhere near as inspired (or inspiring) as that of the dragons, Jay Baruchel isn't particularly great casting as the central hero as his voice, while capable, just doesn't match that character design, and Gerard Butler somehow manages to make his own Scottish accent sound contrived and unconvincing. Oh, and this time Cate Blanchett demonstrates that she can't hold a Scottish accent either, even if her character has been living alone for 20 years.
But don't let my linguistical nit-picking spoil what is, for the most part, an astoundingly beautiful-looking and emotionally charged film. The father/son bonding from How To Train Your Dragon is replaced with a mother/son relationship (it's in the trailer, that's not a spoiler), and while in many films the reversal of themes could seem tacky or forced, it works very well here (even with the wandering accent of Cate). But if it's a boy and his dragon you've come for, you won't be disappointed. The bond between the two is built upon magnificently, and I think it's fair to say that Toothless represents some of the most expressive animation I've ever seen. It's just too bad they couldn't extend that to the humans. The 3D's fairly effective, but isn't a deal-breaker by any means.
As animated sequels go, How To Train Your Dragon 2 is a firm-footed winner, although the linear plot might frustrate older members of the audience. Every bit as funny and charming as the original, it may not be an all-time classic, but will probably be one of the year's highlights.
Best avoided if you'll get annoyed by people with Scottish and American accents living on the same isolated, small island, somehow.
Oh, yeah.
Pretty much.
I imagine it does.
Cinema if your little ones want to go, otherwise it'll be just as good on DVD/BRD.
Nope.
Only before the third film comes out, I suspect.
Didn't hear one.
During the opening dragon-race, is Tuffnut's facepaint a visual nod to the Clone Wars' Savage Opress?
No? Just me? Oh, okay then.
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.
22 Jump Street Cert: 15 / 112 mins / Dir. Phil Lord, Chris Miller
I'd approached the sequel to 2012's Tatum/Hill cop-actioner with no small amount of caution. Not because I didn't thoroughly enjoy its predecessor, but more because it was something of a surprise hit, and then there's that bit in the trailer where Nick Offerman's police captain tells them "do the same thing; everyone's happy". While it's commendable that the makers of the film are at least aware of the thin ice they're cinematically treading on, is it wise to be so blasé about it?
In this case, yes. Yes, it is. 22 Jump Street is far too self-aware for its own good, but somehow no less funny for it. The knowing winks to unnecessary sequels, ageing actors and formulaic plot devices are pushed past clichéd, through repetitive and on to the point where they're funny again (and as I'm entirely aware that comedy is subjective, you'll just have to take my word for that). It's duly noted that while the screenplay points out how crass or laboured the jokes are, it doesn't refrain from cracking them all the same.
Jonah Hill is on good form, and Channing Tatum proves once again that comedic acting is his forté (going to far as to obliquely reference White House Down on-screen). Also faring far better than he should is Ice Cube (especially when you consider that he played essentially the same role in Ride Along, to far lesser effect). All in all, much like its predecessor, this is a great comedy film, and it doesn't try to be anything more (oh, and bonus points for the closing credits full of faux-sequel clips).
While the film feels far too long (the Spring Break segment almost seems to be from another installment) it never gets boring, and it's largely thanks to the chemistry of Hill and Tatum. There's no great 'reveal' this time round, but I don't think a script as self-referential as this could handle it anyway.
A comedy that concentrates on being consistently laugh-out-loud funny above all else, lightning has struck twice on Jump Street and given life to the rarest of beasts: a sequel which stands shoulder-to-shoulder with its progenitor.
Which is also a nice way of saying that if you didn't enjoy 21 Jump Street, there'll be little for you here.
It is.
I did.
More than.
It'll be just as funny on DVD, it just depends how quickly you want to see it.
A bit.
I will.
Pretty sure there's one when they drive through the 'robot factory'?
As funny as 21 and 22 Jump Street have been, they've been lacking prominent female characters (Amber Stevens and Jillian Bell are woefully underwritten in this). Who would you cast in 23 Jump Street to even the see-saw without tipping 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.
