THE SPARKS BROTHERS*****

I came to Edgar Wright's new documentary thinking that Sparks was a novelty act. The weird glam rock singer and Hitler-looking grim keyboard player singing This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us. I only new that they were still around when Leos Carax' brilliantly bizarre ANNETTE was released, with music by the duo. But by the end of this long and loving documentary I had come to a new found respect and eve love for the band, and can't wait to dive into their 25-album-and-counting back catalogue. I turned to my husband at the end of the movie and said that the fact that such a deeply weird, witty, intelligent and NICE band had survived all these years and had new generations of fans said something good about humanity. And certainly about them. It's nice to see a pair of musician-brothers not turn into the feuding Gallaghers, and not become commercial sell-outs, and not become parodies of themselves. Just carry on, making cool, weird records. 

This is Wright's first doc and he brings reverence for the music together with visual flair.  There are so many brilliant jokes in how the interviewees (Bjork, Beck, Katie Puckrick, Flea and sooo many others) are subtitled and how vintage footage is intercut with the interviews. But most of all Wright just has the grace to give this story the run-time it deserves and to give each album its due, no matter whether it was a hit or a bomb. And yes, there seem to have been a lot of ups and downs in their career. The result is that we feel invested in their success and if not their success then their happiness and artistic fulfilment. There's a deeply touching moment near the end where Ron thanks the audience and says that he doesn't take the fans for granted. They really are gentlemen. 

THE SPARKS BROTHERS is rated R and has a running time of 140 minutes. It played Sundance and SXSW 2021 and was released earlier this year.

Preview - THE SMURFS

Smurfs are cute little blue creatures with white floppy hats who live in mushroom-houses in a magical forest. They are cared for by Papa Smurf, the Gandhi of cartoon characters - so caring and lovely that he even turned around the character of Smurfette - the girl smurf sent by evil wizard Gargamel to tempt them. The Smurfs are so without guile that they defy post-modern teenage cynicism regarding their sexual proclivities and political leanings. Okay, there may be a hundred boy smurfs and just one smurfette, but what's so odd about that?!  

What I like about this new live-action/animation movie is that it both embraces the innate loveliness of smurfs, while also tipping its hat to the anachronism of Peyo's creation.  What you get is a movie that is basically very simple and sweet, but also contains the odd witty wink to the camera - such as mocking the use of the word "smurf" as an all-purpose asterisked curse-word; or having Papa Smurf decode a magic spell by looking at an old book of Smurf "mythology" aka a Peyo comic book!  

The contrast of Smurf naivete and modern-day cynicism is achieved, as in the movie ENCHANTED, by having the wizard Gargamel chase the smurfs through a "vortex" to contemporary Manhattan, where they are stranded until they can magic a blue moon and get back home.  Just as Amy Adams' Giselle made Patrick Dempsey's Robert a softer, more fun-loving person in ENCHANTED, the Smurfs give Patrick and Grace Winslow (Neil Patrick Harris and Jayma Mays) a new-found joyfulness and confidence.  I liked the parallel between Patrick discovering the confidence to be a new father with poor Clumsy discovering that he doesn't have to be defined by his name, as all smurfs typically are.

So, as you can tell, I just about enjoyed THE SMURFS because, well, smurfs are cute, and made me feel nostalgic. But, objectively, this is a very badly made movie. Director Roger Gosnell (BEVERLY HILLS CHIHUAHUA) and DP Phil Meheux (THE MASK OF ZORRO) shoot everything in a workman-like over-lit obvious style; Hank Azaria is mis-cast and hammy as Gargamel (imagine Jim Carrey in the role - so much better); the plot is predictable; and for a kids film without sustained adult in-jokes, the run-time, at 100 minutes, is too long.  For all those reasons, this isn't the kind of children's film that adults can watch without the excuse of taking the kids.  But as genuinely earnest, warm-hearted entertainment for the young cinema viewer, it will, no doubt, hit the spot.

THE SMURFS is on release in the US, Canada, Argentina, Spain, Belgium, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Israel, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico and Turkey. It opens next Friday in the UK, China, Iceland, Ireland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia and Paraguay. It opens on August 19th in Estonia, Lithuania and Poland and on August 25th in Denmark and Hungary.  THE SMURFS opens on September 2nd in Singapore, Finland, Norway and Sweden; on September 8th in Greece and Japan; on September 16th in Italy and on October 6th in Thailand.