Review: Barbie

Barbie
(Spoilers)
Cert: 12A / 114 mins / Dir. Greta Gerwig / Trailer

Life is pretty good in Barbieland. Stereotypical Barbie (Margot Robbie) enjoys an idyllic existence partying, relaxing and socialising with a wide swathe of other Barbies. Beach Ken (Ryan Gosling) joins in but pines from afar, wishing their non-committal relationship could move to the next level, while also enjoying an active social life with all the other Kens. But strange things are afoot, and Barbie notices the shine beginning to rub thin on her daily activities; food tastes bad, showers are cold and she can't shake growing feelings of existential dread.

Visiting Weird Barbie (Kate McKinnon) on the outskirts of town, our heroine learns that her problems stem from angst in The Real World, where the girl who owns the doll is suffering a series of emotional upheavals. This discord has caused a tear in the space-time continuum, and the only chance Barbie has of putting things right is by travelling into The Real World (with Ken in tow) and bringing a little sparkle to Los Angeles before Barbieland falls apart...

BROKEN

So it seems Mattel have finally broken into the live-action movie IP business by spending $140 million*¹ in remaking The League Of Gentlemen's Apocalpyse. I mean fair play, I did not have that on my 2023 bingo card, but at least they've got the action figures on the shelves already so this is a bonus (HASBRO TAKE NOTE).

After riffing on Kubrick's 2001 as per the teaser trailer, Barbie's opening act is everything you'd expect from A Barbie Movie naturally, and archly self-aware as it is, still feels like being kidnapped by a hen party and waterboarded with Lambrini. That said, the production design is a thing of surgically precise beauty, a wry homage to the brand rather than a parody. The players are entirely onboard and carry this in the same vein, and both Robbie and Gosling are perfectly chosen with excellent comic timing. Greta Gerwig's tight direction makes the most of her script with longtime collaborator Noah Baumbach.

There are plenty of laugh-out-loud gags throughout, both in Barbieland and The Real World. A huge supporting cast are having a blast as the various branded iterations of Barbie and Ken, and Michael Cera brings his trademark anxious demeanour as Allan. America Ferrera and Ariana Greenblatt are superb as Gloria and Sasha, the mother/daughter combo caught up in the strife which has opened a gateway between planes of existence. Will Ferrell plays the (appropriately unnamed) CEO of Mattel by playing Will Ferrell™, and Dame Helen Mirren continues to channel the late John Hurt by providing a voiceover that's so cloyingly tongue-in-cheek it actually cheapens both the film and her own IMDB catalogue.

The film wears its feminist credentials on its sleeve and does so very well, even if the message feels very much on the nose a lot of the time. But the fact that this ethos has made it out of a dozen boardrooms and onto mainstream cinema screens in such a prominent style is a feat to be applauded in itself. The version of what we see could not have been made without Mattel's endorsement, and while the impression remains that the paymasters are generally in on the joke, we're also left with the feeling Gerwig and Baumbach are filing off many of their sharper edges. What's more interesting is the boxes the film refuses to tick. Despite the ferocious branding and leaning heavily into the current, financially lucrative, version of its namesake, Barbie is not a children's movie. Children can certainly watch it (within the expected 12A parameters obviously), but it's made for adults - specifically, ones who remember Barbie but don't necessarily have a house full of them any more. And yet at the same time, this isn't an empty, cash-grab nostalgia exercise. It's promoting the product definitely, but it's more about selling the idea of Barbie. Or an idea, at any rate.

POISON

In terms of the actual mechanics of the storytelling, things are a little more... well, vague. The spoilers start here, by the way. Even in a tale of fantastical allegory, the internal logistics have to work for the audience to buy-in on an emotional level. So, if Barbieland™ includes every Mattel doll that's played with then the town would have a population of billions, whereas if there's a separate, self-contained Barbieland for every girl who plays with Barbies then each one would only be populated by the dolls that girl owns. The girl in question here (it's Gloria) only has the few dolls left over from her daughter's recent childhood, not the vast array of specifically vintage and also very up-to-the-minute Barbies on display in the film. There's no clarification over why this is. The Barbieland we get seems to include one of everyone, with no details as to how many other humans are involved at a higher level or how ownership has been assigned. But okay, we'll go with it.

We're told a portal has opened due to a Barbie-fan having a hard time in The Real World, yet in the real world boardroom scene we're told this has only happened once before. As if a lot of people in the real world who've got Barbies aren't having a hard time a lot of the time precisely because of how the real world works. There'd be portals everywhere. But okay, we'll go with it. Likewise, we're told that Weird Barbie has become eccentric because her owner/handler/God went a bit crazy and drew on her with pens, cut her hair with scissors and wedged her legs into permanent splits. Again, kids are gonna be kids and there'd be a lot of these Barbies around town. But okay, we'll go with it.

We don't see the actual, plot-critical portal itself, just a recurring vehicle-montage through Barbieland then the travellers being on Venice Beach, Los Angeles; and vice-versa to return. Barbie and Ken manage to take Gloria and Sasha back through with them, so we'll accept that regular humans can make the reverse trip with no ill effects. But Will Ferrell and the entire Mattel board of directors also manage to surreptitiously follow them, so we've got to assume that it's accessible to anyone on-foot from Venice Beach, yet nobody else has accidentally wandered into this portal that's been open for the duration of the entire storyline. How much more of this do we have to go with?

The Crocodile Dundee, fish-out-of-water routine with Barbie and Ken in LA is executed very well, but doesn't last for long as the pair are soon heading back, as noted above. Meanwhile, most people in the Real World seem remarkably calm about the human iterations of two actual dolls walking around, especially the ones who know exactly what's happened. You'd think this absolute upheaval of mundane reality and revelation of a parallel universe might be a bigger deal, somehow. Similarly, when Ferrell and the gang find themselves in Barbieland, the cultural offset is mined for almost zero reciprocal material. Indeed, the screenplay has no idea what to do with these characters so just forgets about them until the climactic Beach-Off where they have pretty much no constructive part to play (the board's overall plan to 'fix' the situation by putting Barbie back into a branded packaging-box is also weirdly indistinct). For a movie that's genuinely funny, it's staggering how much comedy-potential is wasted here.

Despite all my snarking though, Barbie is good. I don't think it's quite everything it wants to be, but it succeeds in being the film that it (and its audience) needs. It's certainly more than Kenough. It is entertaining and it does also carry a worthwhile message. The feminism, however, is not its subtext - that's very much The Text. Deeper meaning is perhaps more rudimentary than a fuchsia-fuelled crusade for girl-power...

RATT

The inhabitants of Barbieland seem vaguely aware that they're dolls and that The Real World exists, but they know next to nothing about it and show little desire to change this. It's not in the dolls' capacity or programming to realise the limitations of their surroundings or question anything outside of them, and so they're completely unable to deal with deeper philosophical problems about anything that can't be quantified in colourful plastic and simple, methodical activities. Even Margot Robbie's Barbie needs to be railroaded into knowledge by McKinnon's older, cynical sister. When peace and regularity is restored to Barbieland at the end of the third act, this is performed largely by reverting to the status quo prior to the first.

Barbie herself (the Margot Robbie one) finally rejects this of course, like a Tyrell Corp replicant now aware of its lifespan and wanting more. Having understood that revolution won't (or can't) work in her hometown, Barbie opts for evolution instead and journeys to live as a human in desaturated, complicated, messy meatspace. As we close, Barbie's future is an open road, albeit a markedly and necessarily less pleasant one in the process. But she's chosen hope and possibility. Gloria and Sasha's lives may be better as the credits roll but they're not that different, and we all know that Will Ferrell's character will still be Mattel's CEO on Monday morning and Gloria will still be working for him. Stereotypical Barbie was the only character in the movie to take a chance, to make a choice that bold, that permanent. And the choice is open to everyone on-screen of course, but the availability of that choice to everybody? That's the feminism, here. That's the equality. Because of course, the price of that freedom means having to accept that some people will decide they want things to not get better...

Back in Barbieland, the remaining collective of Barbies and Kens (okay, and Allan) also have wider knowledge of how things really work now, and they choose repair their society by setting all this to one side and carrying on as before. They're not ready to make the change, yet. Similar to Never Let Me Go, this might be the most profound point the film makes - that the Barbies' and Kens' perfect, repetitive, superficial lives are our lives, as we blankly rush through our ingrained routine to spend disposable income being distracted by a two hour dopamine-boost in a cinema. Or at a party. In a restaurant. At a shopping mall. In dream houses full of wonderful organised, covetable, accumulating stuff, always thinking about tomorrow and never appreciating the nuances of today, just as we recoil in horror whenever someone mentions the truth that we will not talk about: that fact one day soon, we will die.

We could live more, feel more, choose the genuine thrill of uncertainty. But it's easier to choose not to. Stereotypical Barbie has chosen to truly live, and in doing so has chosen death. And this is a final theme upon which Barbie does not dwell of course, because it doesn't do to be overtly reminded you're wasting your life by a toy advert...*²

*¹ Wikipedia lists the film's budget (production, not including marketing) at $128-$145m. And while that obviously is a lot of money, it has to be said that bringing in a Hollywood-grade film with a production-design this polished and featuring this cast for under 150 large ones is pretty damned impressive, especially looking at the box office returns it's making... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² There is a very strong chance I've over-thought all this of course, but please do bear in mind that I'm the one who interpreted the U-rated Boss Baby animated movie as being a study of infant-mortality induced PTSD... ^{[ 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.

Review: Bombshell

Bombshell
Cert: 15 / 109 mins / Dir. Jay Roach / Trailer

Oh, is it awards-season already? No sooner have the Golden Globes taken over Twitter discourse*¹ than we begin with the raft of Worthy™ films, released in January because voting committees have notoriously short memories when it comes to listing the favourite things they've watched.

And opening this year's lectures is Jay Roach with Bombshell, the Charles Randolph-penned screen rendering of 2016's media-scandal where everybody suddenly realised that Fox News was being run by some right old wrong'uns. Charlize Theron leads as presenter Megyn Kelly, with Nicole Kidman as outgoing host Gretchen Carlson and Margot Robbie as incoming harassment-target Kayla Pospisil. John Lithgow stars Roger Ailes, the touchy-feely Darth Vader to Malcolm McDowell's Emperor Rupert Murdoch.

CAST

And it's good in a sort of solidly linear fashion. The story is compelling (although this has more to do with the real-life actual events) and the cast are fantastic (although it's a fantastic cast, so we'd expect nothing less). Roach brings the social urgency of The Post and the wry outlook of The Big Short, always taking the subject seriously but with some of its aspects requiring a full fourth-wall-break to convey the required incredulity*².

But the film spends quite a lot of its runtime winking at the audience (whether that's the glaring "STAY IN LANE" road signs during Kelly's deliberations over how to react to the developing situation, or Ailes' withering line of "me too..." during his firing, followed by five seconds of pointed silence in the room). Bombshell often feels like the dramatised-reconstruction sequences of a documentary without the documentary and made for an audience who already know the story.

THE LA'S

Which brings us to Bombshell's biggest problem, a searing dose of Daniel Blake Syndrome. It's never entirely clear what point the film is trying to make which wasn't made by the 2016 news reports or the subsequent flow of reactions and think-pieces. And it's even less certain whose mind film is going to change.

There'll be no sexists watching this thinking "Hey, I've asked attractive young women to undress (and more) in my office before, but y'know that seems more than a bit creepy now I've watched Big Roger doing it!". Similarly, the liberal (and let's be fair, 'target') audience are already sympathetic to the cause. While there's plenty of justifiable outrage, there are few revelations here. With the very best will in the world, Bombshell is two hours of confirmation-bias*³.

Yet at the same time the central message of the movie is still very much relevant. The issues the movie addresses are still ongoing and show no real sign of being resolved*⁴. Bombshell exists in 2020 because it needs to exist.

Here endeth the lesson.

On the shelf with Vice, Spotlight and The Big Short.



Cinema's not quite its natural home, no.



Stream it. There's not really a lot of re-watch value here.



Not with a cast as solid as this one.



That's likely.



There isn't.



Level 1: NPR Radio Drama Yoda is in this. And he makes a Jabba The Hutt reference.





*¹ Okay, that's probably more the thrust of my social media feeds than your own. Yours probably have far more serious (ie depressing) subject matter to infuriate your lunch hour, but there's only one of us who can change that... ^{[ BACK ]}

*² I must admit that during Theron's opening whistle-stop 'to-audience' introduction of the Fox News building, the style and pacing had me believing we'd cut to a shot of Ron Burgundy any moment and it wouldn't be played for laughs. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Although to be fair, Bombshell does at least challenge the cosseted liberal audience in one regard, with its idea that Fox News apparently employs people who a) aren't absolute arseholes to begin with, b) somehow aren't aware of the absolute arsehole problem at Fox News, and c) are fine with putting a roof over their heads by actively contributing to the continued success of some absolute arseholes. Of course I know it's not that simple. But of course I'd still walk away from someone in a pub if they told me they worked for one of "those" outlets. In a movie about every single voice having an essential and cumulative effect, it seems odd to be forgiving people who go with the fetid flow for an easy life. Even the guy just mopping up the blood is still keeping the abattoir in business.

Although bear in mind that next week I'll be watching the new socio-political drama from Mr Clint Eastwood, so my leftie-righteousness will be stretched the other way as I'll doubtlessly sit going 'DO YOU THINK THIS POMPOUS CONSERVATIVE HOGWASH IS GOING TO CHANGE MY MIND?' for two hours. ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ Because even in 2020 people are still awful, in case you hadn't noticed. ^{[ 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.

Review: Yesterday (part two, with spoilers)

Yesterday (part two of two, SPOILERS)
Cert: 12A / 116 mins / Dir. Danny Boyle / Trailer



This is part two of my Yesterday review, and it contains spoilers. If you haven't seen the film yet and you're just wondering whether you should/shouldn't bother (you should), you can read part one here. Under the normal run of things, this would be what I call a second-pass review, hopefully picking up new notes and observations from a repeat screening. This time however, it's more a list of things I noticed the first time round, wanted to confirm with a second viewing and couldn't include in a spoiler-free review anyway.

Before I begin this laundry-list of complaints, I should point out again that I unironically, unreservedly, unapologetically love Yesterday. It's twee, it's corny, it's got people in it who I don't like and parts of the film just don't work on a logical level, but I don't care. The phrase 'feel-good' is often used to damn with faint praise, but on this occasion I can think of no greater compliment. Yesterday is glorious.

It's just that, erm...



Well it doesn't work, does it? The premise I mean, or particularly its execution. Now I've seen various reviews and articles describe the setup as Jack waking up from his accident to a world where no one remembers The Beatles (including one of the film's own posters, alarmingly). That's not what happens here. Jack wakes up to a world where The Beatles never existed, and there's a massive narrative difference between the two. This isn't a case of global amnesia, the recognised timeline has been altered at some point in the past, then Jack is re-inserted at the juncture point with only memories of the now-alternate reality. If anything, this is an extension of the mechanics explored in Richard Curtis' earlier piece, About Time.

And true to form, Curtis (and to a lesser extent the co-writer of the story, if not the screenplay, Jack Barth) displays a grasp of causality every bit as firm as his one on time travel*¹. In the words of Red Dwarf's Holly, "there's no such thing as small" when it comes to changing time. And removing one of the most influential cultural phenomena to ever exist then spinning forward half a century isn't even meant to be small. So let's dive in...

KNOWLEDGE

It starts with Oasis. Shortly after realising that no one has any knowledge of The Beatles, Jack decides to check his record collection and sure enough, those discs have disappeared. So the next stop is Google and sure enough, there's no trace of the band on the internet either. Jack begins looking for other artists, to see how widespread the problem is. Bowie, yes. The Stones, yes. And there's a Fratellis poster still on his bedroom wall. But Oasis have disappeared. It's well documented that the Mancunian band were heavily influenced by The Beatles, so Jack sighs and looks at his computer monitor. "Yeah, that figures", he mumbles. Good joke. Everybody laugh.

But we've already seen a flashback of the time that Jack first impressed Ellie at a school concert in 2004, as the youngster played a cover version of Wonderwall by... Oasis. So without the existence of The Beatles and therefore Oasis, Jack wouldn't have played Wonderwall at the gig. He'd have played something else of course, and evidently it still created the pan-dimensional bond with Ellie. But what song was it instead? Why wouldn't this be the next question to pop into Jack's mind? Why doesn't he pick this up with Ellie and ask her details about the concert he can't now remember properly? When Jack's busy in L.A. plagiarising The Beatles in the recording studio, why doesn't he throw a couple of Oasis songs in there, too?

Surely a movie which centers around the enduring legacy of The Beatles should show that their influence spreads throughout pretty much everything which followed in popular music, to some level. Even bands who don't attempt to ape the sound or song structure are aware of The Beatles work, sometimes avoiding those tropes for the same reason as others tribute them. The musical landscape of 2019 would be unrecognisable if The Beatles hadn't formed.

BURST

And it's not just the music itself. Countless people have met, bonded, loved and even fought over the some of the greatest songs of the 20th century. The reality that Jack snaps into after his accident would be massively different all over, and there's a fair chance that the people he knew - if they even existed in the new timeline - wouldn't recognise him. To assume that in the absence of The Beatles everything else would continue bimbling along but with a different soundtrack completely undercuts the point of the narrative. If anything, it shows the world is essentially no different for their loss.

And yet there are some bizarre offshoots which get raised. Jack repeatedly asks for Coca Cola and Coke, and no one has a clue what he's on about. Pepsi still exists in this new timeline, but not Coke. We never get to the bottom of this. The implication (since it's not explored) is that a knock-on effect from no Beatles is that Coca Cola has gone, too. But Coca Cola first appeared in 1886, some 54 years before the eldest band members were even born. So are we to believe that The Coca Cola Corporation went bust because the song 'Come Together' was never written and their product didn't get a mention? That was a throwaway line, not an advertisment. The Beach Boys made a reference to the drink too (five years earlier), and Elvis did an actual product placement run in '77. I think Coke were doing alright without the Fab Four.

Then there's the cigarette moment. Apparently in the altered universe, cigarettes either don't exist or just aren't called cigarettes. This all happens in under a minute, also isn't properly explored, then is never referred to again. But the term was coined in 1830, in the French town of the same name. So is the implication that without John, Paul, George and Ringo, the habit died out in the 1960s and now nobody even remembers cigarettes? Well no, because Jack's Google search would have brought up their history until that point. Instead it returns only the name of the town.

Which leads me to believe that something much bigger has changed further back in time, and The Beatles are casualty of this ripple in exactly the same way as fags and Coke. None of this is delved into of course, because we're here for the music*²…

LEATHER ARSE

Or at least we are until Curtis and Barth realise that because they haven't properly explained their alternate world and certainly not the actual cause of the rift, there's no way to reset the glitch. The Beatles can't suddenly pop back into existence, because then either everybody's got to suddenly remember them again or everybody's got to magically forget that Jack became famous with their songs. And if Jack pops back into his own timeline then the whole film has been for nothing. So if the previous order isn't restored, the story doesn't have a proper ending.

Instead, Jack makes his confession to a Wembley Stadium full of people with precisely zero of a million questions from everyone afterward, and apparently also not having the arse sued off him by the record company with whom, at that point, he has definitely signed a contract which he voided in a very public fashion. He just goes back into teaching, having dumped a load of tracks on the internet which he intends not to capitalise upon, meaning the record company will claim copyright on the songs themselves anyway since these mythical 'original authors' are nowhere to be found. Great work, Jack.

So because the music-story doesn't end properly, Jack and Ellie's tale just sort of peters out too, lacking the emotional wallop it really deserves after two hours. There's the impression that a lot more is said between them, all off-screen, but by that point the editor has one eye on the credits sequence and the run-time already submitted to the BBFC.

Overall, Yesterday feels like its most interesting aspect has been glossed over to make way for the rom-com, and it feels like the rom-com has been glossed over to facilitate the soundtrack, and it feels like the soundtrack has been hobbled by cramming in too many songs for the film's running time.

And somehow none of that matters, I still absolutely love it…*³

About Time.



It is.



It is.



This will be a high water-mark on everyone's CV for some time to come.
Yes, even Ed's.



If you start dissing it, that's possible.



There isn't.



Level 1: I'm sticking with Young Lando. Go on, change my mind.





*¹ And much like the retort to any nitpicking of time travel movies, saying "Oh but it's all fictional so it doesn't matter" is not a defence for sloppy writing. The story has to work internally, because if the logic is irrelevant then so are the characters, so is the emotion, and so is the reason for paying £10 to sit in a dark room for two hours watching it. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Well snippets of the music, as previously noted. I'll go on record now as saying I would happily watch a three-hour cut of this film where each song is played in full rather than clipped out, much like Inside Llewyn Davis and Sing Street. In fact, let's make that a four hour version if someone could throw in a proper deconstruction of the timeline, too. ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ And I dread to think what kind of hits this post is going to get by using 'Leather Arse' as the last crossheader, but there we go! ^{[ 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.

Review: Yesterday (part one, spoiler-free)

Yesterday (part one of two, spoiler-free)
Cert: 12A / 116 mins / Dir. Danny Boyle / Trailer



There are certain movies where you know you need that soundtrack before the ink has dried on the first act. Inside Llewyn Davis is one, so is Sing Street. And now Yesterday joins that list. And it's not just because of the tracklisting (who doesn't already know that The Beatles are fantastic?), but rather the performance of the songs in the movie*¹. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

SINGER

Yesterday follows Jack Malik (Himesh Patel), a 27yr old aspiring singer/songwriter from Suffolk who works in a discount supermarket by day and plays largely audience-free gigs by night. Downhearted, Jack is on the verge of quitting and returning to his old job of teaching, much to the annoyance of his friend/agent/manager Ellie (Lily James). But when cycling home one night, a far-reaching power blackout sees Jack involved in a serious road accident.

When he awakes in hospital, all seems normal (other than bruises and the abscence of a couple of teeth), but it quickly becomes apparent that nobody except Jack has ever heard of The Beatles. How has this happened? More to the point, what can be done? Armed with an acoustic guitar and a fairly encyclopaedic memory of lyrics and chord structures, it seems that our hero's musical career is now set on a solid path. Because what can go wrong when you're just invented some of the greatest songs of all time?*²

WILDE

Yes, writer Richard Curtis returns to our screens with the utterly fantastical proposition that anyone could know Lily James socially, and not spend all their time in her presence basically crying because they're so utterly in love. James and Patel are fantastic, the dual-pivot around which the entire movie hangs. Himesh gets the lion's share of the screen-time in jetting to America for the big time of course, but carries it off effortlessly, every bit as charming when he's speaking as when he's singing.

And it's not just the leads who do well here. The movie is filled with a cast who are happy just to be a supporting part of something much bigger (am I the only one who grinned like an idiot when Meera Syal and Sanjeev Bhaskar are introduced Jack's parents? It'd arguably be lazy casting if the pair of them weren't so fantastic to begin with). I never thought I'd see the day where I genuinely enjoyed a vehicle carrying Ed Sheeran and James Corden, yet here we are*³.

MCFLY

The script is occasionally ungainly but of course yes, it's Richard Curtis, so the whole thing ultimately runs like it's on rails. Wasting little time, the film begins with an air of Quantum Leap or Tales of The Unexpected, albeit for an audience who want absolutely no surprises. The sub-plot with Justin Edwards’ and Sarah Lancashire's characters is thoroughly and mercilessly telegraphed, then largely unexplored save for one wish-fulfilment scene that feels slightly tacked on.

But if you've come for the music of The Beatles, you won't be disappointed. Then again, you might. While Patel's central turn here is outstanding, it's notable that we don't get any complete renditions of songs, more a 'greatest clips' selection to facilitate a realistic runtime and higher turnover of titles (read: soundtrack sales). Then again, The Beatles have long been a business rather than an artistic endeavour, so maybe that's to be expected. And because the soundtrack is based almost exclusively on their work, at least we're spared the pantomime of director Danny Boyle gleefully hitting shuffle on his iPod as if he's trying to impress a girl in the year above. But I digress.

BUSTED

Elsewhere we get a baffling assortment of on-screen graphics throughout the movie featuring famous song titles and place-names, like it's been produced in conjunction with the Liverpool Tourist Board and designed by the work-experience kid. And who knew Ed Sheeran can't act? Well everyone, now. In line with the narrative, we get a lengthy stretch telling us how vapid and superficial the music industry is once money becomes involved (but not the movies though, eh Richard?) before things reach an end which is emotionally satisfying but makes no sense when put under scrutiny.

But I'll write more about that in my second review.
Because despite my gripes I love this flick and I want to see it again.

Yesterday has been precision-engineered to appeal to the broadest, safest possible audience, and is often so clunkingly on-the-nose that I'd normally want to fire it into the heart of the sun. And once the inevitable mainstream gushing occurs upon the film's general release, maybe I'll feel that way still.

But right now? Yesterday is pretty magnificent.
If the cast don't melt your heart, the soundtrack will.

If you enjoyed About Time, you'll dig this immensely.



It is.



It's probably going to be one to buy once the price comes down, although at the same time I rather suspect that this film will have a long life on broadcast television.



Everyone involved can be very, very proud of this.*⁴



Unlikely, although I will start a lengthy conversation with you about causality. You have been warned.



There isn't.



Level 1: Well technically, Young Lando Calrissian is in this. But if you're not going for that, so is the Guest At Dryden Vos' Pad dude.





*¹ I'm talking about diegetic/performance albums by the way, not film scores or those ones where the soundtrack is a compilation of pre-existing tracks. Because as magnificent as the Dusk Till Dawn CD is, who among us hasn't eagerly rushed out to buy things like The Crow only to discover two - maybe three - decent tracks on it and the rest being absolute filler? And any OST boasting the words ”Music Inspired By The Film" can do one as well, frankly. If a band's song isn't good enough to make the final edit of the movie, I don't see why it should be included on the tie-in material. There. I said it. ^{[ BACK ]}

*² Although as Christina Martin recently noted, "Gary Sparrow already fully explored the Yesterday movie concept".
Goodnight Sweetheart is at the core of my idea for bringing Dad's Army into the MCU anyway, so I'm delighted it's starting to catch on. Besides, now it'd make the time-travel element of Endgame a lot more fluid. Has anyone got Nicholas Lyndhurst’s number? ^{[ BACK ]}

*³ Hey, at least P*ers M*rgan has been confined to a cameo in the new Men In Black movie. A guest appearance on, as it turns out, precisely the platform he deserves... #Meow ^{[ BACK ]}

*⁴ Apart from Sheeran and Corden obviously, who should spend every remaining breath apologising for everything beforehand. WHAT? ^{[ 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.

Review: The Spy Who Dumped Me

The Spy Who Dumped Me
Cert: 15 / 117 mins / Dir. Susanna Fogel / Trailer



Readers of a certain age may remember the Morecambe & Wise film where our heroes unwittingly become involved in espionage shenanigans*¹ and dark-edged hilarity ensues. Well, suffice to say that The Spy Who Dumped Me is The Intelligence Men for the Bad Moms generation.

So: Something something, pair of slacker friends who get drunk and make dick jokes; something something asshole boyfriend who is really an untrustworthy CIA operative; something something, going on an impromptu whistle-stop tour of Europe to try and save the world from a terrorist organisation while the authorities look on in comedic consternation; something something, we haven't written a punchline for this scene I'm sure you'll be able to figure something out on the day…

Mila 'Friends With Benefits' Kunis and Kate 'Office Christmas Party' McKinnon star in the resulting action-caper where director Susanna Fogel encourages the pair to ad-lib their way around a bare-bones screenplay, while frenetic action scenes play out periodically. Their improvisation is patchy, lacks cohesion and is still far stronger than the scripted dialogue. Yet bizarrely, the action choreography here is pretty outstanding and saves what's left of the movie. The 15 certificate awarded by the BBFC for the multitude of profanities also allows for some pretty brutal fight scenes, and they're executed with far more vigour and flair than the po-faced thrillers who claim to be doing this sort of thing for a living.

Kunis and McKinnon are great screen presences of course, and have a fairly strong chemistry together, but they're utterly wasted on a movie which feels like it was (half) written for Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell. And while it's certainly a step in the right direction having a female co-writer and director for the outing, dropping everyone into pedestrian fare like this threatens to drag a more progressive phase of studio-comedy back into the current one.

Ladies. Don't try to beat the guys at their own game.
The game already sucks.
Just be better.

Well it's more enjoyable than Spy and Zoolander 2, admittedly, although you could quite comfortably keep all three movies on the same shelf.



This is a £4 DVD in ASDA.



Actually even better, just stream it yeah?



It isn't.



Quite possibly, if you're one of the patrons in my screening who openly guffawed at a man getting some documentation out of a desk. Yeah, more than one person did this. So I mean, the stationery-retrieval aspect of the movie is clearly working for some audiences, and that's a notoriously fickle comedy-niche....



There isn't.



Level 1: Canto Bight's resident Master Codebreaker is in this.





*¹ Okay, I know that's not quite the exact setup of the The Intelligence Men, you don't have to go on about it. But I promise you, in comparison with The Spy Who Dumped Me it's close enough. ^{[ BACK ]}

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• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
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