Well I for one wouldn't have put money on a cinematic highlight of 2018 being Ewan McGregor's chemistry with a CGI bear. In fact, it's a damned shame that this (repeated) display is the best thing about Disney's Christopher Robin. As a demo-reel for what a great physical and emotional actor Ewan can be, this movie is worth every penny of the ticket.
But it's… well, it's Disney. We know what to expect from the sentimental live-action fare they present, yet it still stings a little when it's not as perfect as their animation. Don't get me wrong, Christopher Robin is a solid movie, but it's one you've seen elsewhere - and not just in Winnie The Pooh stories. Great care is taken to gently lay All The Hits into the script in terms of callbacks and catchphrases, and there are some solid gold moments in here. But it feels like a large idea written in small words, while Jon Brion and Geoff Zanelli's score tells the audience what they should be feeling at any given moment.
Never quite patronising but certainly simplistic, all the emotional buttons are pushed in a way which suggests a safe-play from the studio. Some great deadpan comedy performances get slightly lost in a script which uses twee slapstick as its default setting. I'm not entirely sure that director Marc Forster is the best candidate for the job (despite his excellent work with McGregor, as noted), having previously delivered the lacklustre World War Z and the oft-derided Quantum Of Solace. Moving around the genres is perfectly permissible, but mastering one along the way is preferable.
Christopher Robin's story itself is based on a solid enough premise of nostalgia, family values and paternal redemption, but it's a formula which Disney have already done to perfection with their first Mary Poppins outing. December hares toward us with considerable expectation, to put it mildly.
The film all but abandons its core-message after the first act, racing for the finish line and becoming that movie where the businessman tells his snide boss to stick it up his backside while making an inspirational speech with his daughter at the back of the room that results in a gradual-applause response. Basically, a Jim Carrey film in the late 1990s.
Christopher Robin is good, but despite its high-points you know it should be better.
On the plus side, the recurring motif of the red balloon was very reminiscent of IT, and during the dreamlike underwater-sequence I did expect Ewan to pick up then discard two opium suppositories. Damn that PG certificate.
It feels like a property with the cultural legacy of Winnie The Pooh perhaps deserves more, but that comes down to Disney's stewardship of the brand more than anything else, which is by no means a new issue.
At some point in its development, Christopher Robin was a fantastic movie. But this feels like Disney are lazily trying to ape the success of Paddington, and for that they'll need a little less schmaltz and lot more sincerity…
Well, Paddington, frankly.
Not that it really should be.
Wet Sunday afternoon, sure.
When it comes down to a sensible price it'll be a one to have on the shelf.
Yes, even though I've done little but complain about it.
It's because I care, honest.
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.
And with the first breaths of Summer comes the first of the UK TV Sitcom adaptations (a spin-off from The Office lands next month), in what appears to be an annual push to make the small screen big. The long-mooted revival of Absolutely Fabulous certainly has the cast-list and the enthusiastic fan-base*1 to be a contender, but can it live up to its own titular premise..?
The screenplay opts for the tried and tested Holiday On The Buses*2 format, having the central characters Patsy and Edina flee to the south of France in a bid to escape negative press-attention after seemingly having killed Kate Moss. If the premise sounds a little flimsy, it's supported by solid humour (both scripted and visual), and the approach to celebrity-cameos that Rambo takes to backup ammunition. Playing spot-the-star is a lot of fun at first, but really stars to wear thin by the halfway-point in the film. On the plus side though everyone's enjoying their 15 seconds of fame, which counts for a lot, and you can tell that there was a queue of people wanting to appear, rather than a queue of favours waiting to be called in.
In the spirit of the TV series, AbFab does what it does well and revels in its own silliness. Saunders and Lumley are on fantastic form, and the first half hour is the most enjoyable when the pair are in their element on home-turf. Other TV-cast regulars show willing but are sidelined a little (although that's very much the nature of the characters anyway). As is par for the course with these things, the story itself is almost a bit of an afterthought, but that's always the way when you're adapting from thirty-minute TV shows. And when that narrative begins to creak, it's difficult to coast on charm when your party-trick is being professionally gauche.
More of a collection of set-pieces and running gags than a story-proper (although this applies to most comedy movies these days, to be fair), Jennifer Saunders' screenplay doesn't necessarily expand on any existing story-canon, and in the end it doesn't really feel like it's added anything unique to what's come before. In fact, you can almost hear the penny drop at around 82 minutes where the realisation that everything needs to be tied up sharpish really hits home. But it's easy to watch, consistently funny and never too mean-spirited, so this transition already fares better than others in its class (AbFab's spiritual sibling Bottom being a prime example).
While it's not going to win any awards nor make new fans, Absolutely Fabulous is very entertaining. Perhaps even more superficial than it intends to be, but saved by embracing its own preposterousness rather than fighting it.
Although, y'know. It's not a film.
In terms of comedy, just about any Sumer Brit-com of the last five years, even though this is actually better than the vast majority of them.
For the communal laughter, sure.
It sets its own bar low, and it clears it with ease.
Not best exactly, but reliably competent.
Nope.
Nope.
Level 1: This film's got Celia 'Bravo 5' Imrie in it. And Gwendoline 'Phasma' Christie.
*1 The good news is that Friday night is movie night and Screen 1 was packed. Although it was mostly made up of a civilian audience. That doesn't matter to the accounting department of course (and nor should it), but the two patrons occupying our seats when we arrived knew emphatically (if cheerfully) that they were in G15 and G16, despite evidently not being able to read the numbers G11 and G12 on the seats they were actually in. Sent those fuckers packing, mind (again, cheerfully). You don't start that shit in my local, I don't care how many stamps you've got on your Lambrini gold-card…
*2 Essentially where the characters from an established TV sitcom find themselves, for their cinematic adaptation, travelling to a more exotic location, often the coast or seaside and often by the narrative means of going on a holiday. In the past it was the aforementioned Holiday On The Buses and Are You Being Served, lately it's been Bad Education and The Intbetweeners (twice). As structures go, it's as lazy as it is reliable, ironically forcing the writers to work even harder to keep things moving. Well, it's supposed to...
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, what could be better for the lunchtime film-slot than catching up with Obi-Wan, Monneypenny and Bootstrap Bill? Perhaps only doing it at the ear-splitting volume normally reserved for crap horror movies? (That's your call, Cineworld, but it's not like there's mumbled dialogue to make up for in this film)
So, director Susanna White manages to do what Tomas Alfredson apparently couldn't all those years ago, and brings a John Le Carré thriller to the big screen without it being a complete, stilted mess. And at no point is a tent-based live entertainment facility identified in the script as having a Talpidae-infestation in its uppermost reaches…
University lecturer Perry (Ewan McGregor), his barrister wife Gail (Naomi Harris), Russian Mafia informant Dima (Stellan Skarsgård) and British Intelligence operative Hector (Damian Lewis) lead the story of corruption and money laundering through Marrakech, London, Paris and Bern, in a surprisingly tense thriller that never feels over-egged, somehow.
Harris, Skarsgård and Lewis are fantastic as the core characters for the film, sometimes leaving Ewan McGregor struggling to keep up. He struggles well, but you can see the strain. Meanwhile, cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle comes through his desaturated colour-palette and subdued lighting, and manages to conjure reflections and lens-flare as if by magic. It's a striking combination, but it works well. Visually, the film is definitely glossier than a made-for-TV thriller, but its content wouldn't be out of place at 9pm on a Sunday evening*1 (although this says more about the quality of modern TV than it does about cinema, admittedly).
With its 108 minute runtime, the film rolls at a very measured pace, with White neither rushing nor dawdling, allowing the plot to unfurl organically. And there's little-to-none of the double-cross twists you'd expect of the genre, if only because the audience don't fully trust any of the characters to begin with.
The film may not pick up too many awards (or even that much recognition), but Our Kind of Traitor is an example of a film succeeding in a genre which should be more than overcrowded by now. An intelligent thriller which never feels it has to be needlessly confusing or obscure in its storytelling.
Come for the writing; stay for the performances.
And massive props go to screenwriter Hossein Amini, who gives Mark Gatiss the best acerbic (and utterly deadpan) quip of the film with "…I don't like the c**t any more than you do". Unless your name is Guy Ritchie, you do not drop a line like that lightly.
The second-best dialogue exchange comes in a car-scene, as Stellan opens his shirt to Ewan, revealing a chest inked in symbolic mafia ephemera. "Do you know what this is?", he asks, pointing to an illustration over his solar plexus. "Is it a clearly fake tattoo…", Ewan replies, "…drawn on less than ten minutes ago in blue felt-tips by the work-experience kid who's heard of Russian Mafia tats, but has never seen one?".
Stellan looks out of the window awkwardly as the scene fades to black…
Only if you want to appreciate the cinematography on a massive screen.
It does.
Not best, but deserving of a place on the CV, certainly.
Nope.
Nope.
Level 1: Obi-Wan Kenobi's in this.
*1 Although it's also worth pointing out that director Susanna White has helmed relatively few cinematic features, but has a lot of solid TV work under her belt.
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, another Friday afternoon, another game of 'who's the youngest person in the audience?'. Although since the prize is a pocket-warmed Werther's Original, I think I'll pass, thanks.
And so, February sees the cinematic reinvigoration of Dad's Army creak audibly into our midst. Like many others, my heart sank when I heard the project had the go-ahead, but picked up again when I read the casting announcement. And then sank again when I saw the first trailer. This period re-tooling of a (pretty much) universally-loved TV show from the 1960s & 70s was always going to be a tricky beast to handle, being a high-watermark of classic comedy over the generations. But that doesn't seem to be a deterrent where movies are concerned, these days...
Well, the good news is, the film could have been far worse. The love and respect for the original source material shines through, and there's a feeling that the screenplay is as much a tribute to the spirit of Dad's Army as it is to the original cast. Toby Jones is quietly magnificent as Captain Mainwaring, capturing the blustering personality without devolving into a clichéd impersonation. And he's supported by players who clearly 'get' what Dad's Army is (The Inbetweeners' Blake Harrison is great as Pvt Pike too, I have to say).
And there the praise runs out, unfortunately. While the film is a pleasant enough distraction, it rarely provokes more than a smirk, never mind the chortles and guffaws which should accompany a title like this. Writer Hamish McColl seems to have taken the timeless nature of the TV series as a license to not attempt anything remotely new, and the film suffers as a result. Far from trying too hard to please 2016's audience, Dad's Army spends so much time tiptoeing around its own legacy that it forgets to be funny. The character-catchphrases are all present and correct and not flogged to death by any means, but there's still the feeling of a box being ticked each time one lands*1.
What the film left me with wasn't the feeling of a wasted opportunity, but a missed one, certainly. The film's tone suggests that this could have been so much more than a winsome cover-version, but the screenplay's content has let it down. Truth be told, this isn't a film, it's a Christmas one-off TV special coming just over a month late and in a cinema instead of your living room.
But by next Christmas, it'll be £3 on DVD, so you can safely enjoy it at home then.
Oh, and Catherine Zeta Jones' scenes have been filmed with a focus so soft that I spent half the film worrying I was developing cataracts.
If you thought the Dad's Army 'mobile phone' out-take/improv*3 was cringe-inducing, wait until you sit through the end-credits a cappella*2 ensemble sing-song of Who Do You Think You Are Kidding Mr Hitler.
Engineers are currently devising a way to effectively harness the near-infinite energy being created by Bud Flanagan spinning in his grave...
I have no idea. I mean, not even Dad's Army, and that's the point of it, so…
No.
No.
No.
Probably.
No.
Level 2: Dad's Army stars Toby Jones, who played Dr. Arnim Zola those Captain America movies, which also starred Sam 'Windu' Jackson.
And ironically enough, Jones' performance as Captain Mainwaring in this film seems to owe many facial ticks and mannerisms to Hugo Weaving's Red Skull in the first Cap outing Which is pretty weird when you think about it...
*1 Incidentally, Bill Paterson's scene as dour Scot, Sgt Fraser, where he gets to rhyme off his "We're doomed!" line is the only one where he acts or sounds anything like the original Sgt Fraser, suggesting either very lax direction, or that he was cast in the role purely because he was Scottish and over 65. Neither is a particularly reassuring prospect. The same goes for Bill Nighy playing Sgt Wilson as his "Bill Nighy" character, but that's hardly a surprise. Oh, and see also Michael Gambon with his "Michael Gambon" character, although I don't think a director has ever lived who could change that state of affairs.
*2 Fear not, that comes well after the original TV version of the sig-tune. Although they've still chopped the middle-eight out of it, the bastards.
*3 It's the 'turn that phone off' short which has been running in front of Cineworld movies for the last month or so, and also appears in the closing credits of the film as an out-take, of sorts. I'm also assuming it's improvised, because there's no way someone could have written something that shambolic and ill-timed.
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.
