TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM*****

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM blew me away with its wonderfully grungy, plasticine-y, incredibly dynamic animation style; its hilariously funny script; its ridiculously impressive voice cast; its 90s nostalgia; and its heart-felt debate about whether mutants can ever be accepted by humans (echoes of X-MEN). Kudos to debut directors Kyler Spears and Jeff Rowe, and screenwriters Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, for creating something so genuinely compelling, that deserves to spoken of in the same breath as SPIDERVERSE. Five stars FTW!

The movie starts with our teenange mutant protagonists living in hiding in New York, under the tutelage of their ninja rat daddy voiced by JACKIE CHAN!!!! He suffered rejection from humans and just wants to keep his kids safe. So they are left pining for real High School life, absurdly informed by watching FERRIS BUELLER at a drive-thru, and wondering whether if they came out of hiding to help people with their mad skills, humans would accept them.

Lucky for us they get a chance to test out their theory.  They meet April O'Neill, their wannabe journalist ally, here recast as a young African-American teenager with glasses, smarts, and a penchant for chundering on air. Together they realise that the person terrorising New York is an evil scientist (Maya Rudolph) who wants to take their Precious Bodily Fluids and create even more mutants. She and her  evil henchman (Ice-T) will then assert mutant dominance over humans for good.

I absolutely loved the knowing pop-culture references, the funny dialogue, and the genuine feeling of camaraderie I felt among the turtles. I genuinely felt that Jackie Chan's rat was their surrogate dad and that they loved each other.  The whole thing was clever, knowing but also just wonderfully uplifting.  Honestly, I wouldn't change a frame and really hope this is the first in a franchise.

TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES: MUTANT MAYHEM has a running time of 99 minutes and is rated PG. It was released in early August.

DADDY'S HOME

DADDY'S HOME is a comedy from the writers and director of HOT TUB TIME MACHINE and HORRIBLE BOSSES 2. It contains the same kind of raucous verbal humour and physical pratfalls.  Will Ferrell stars as Brad Whitaker - a decent man and earnest stepfather of two kids.  The problems start when their biological father Dusty Mayron (Mark Wahlberg) shows up.  He's more charismatic and popular, even though he actually doesn't have the integrity or care to be a good parent.  At least Brad's wife Sara (Linda Cardellini) understands Brad's pain - she was also sick of being the strict parent when married to Dusty.  

The narrative arc is pretty predictable.  The childish father is obviously going to be redeemed but essentially leave the newly blended family in tact.  And in a set up for a sequel, we see Dusty meet the biological dad of his own stepkid by the end of the film.  Still, we don't come to a movie like this for innovative narrative structure.  What makes it work is the verbal and physical comedy and the genuine heart.  Will Ferrell really sells the roll of the loveable geeky stepdad and the budding bromance between Brad and Dusty by the end of the film is kind of sweet. The end may be a little too on the nose for some, but at least you've had more than a few laughs along the away.  

DADDY'S HOME has a running time of 96 minutes and is rated PG-13.  The movie is on release in the UK, Canada, Cambodia, Pakistan, the USA, Australia and Ireland. It opens later in December in New Zealand, Egypt, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam and goes on global release in January.

TRAINWRECK

TRAINWRECK is just like every other Judd Apatow comedy. There's a character who's essentially a loveable gorgeous person but because of various issues has an infantile attachment to booze, weed and the sofa, so much so that said character almost loses the love of their life. But after a final act come to Jesus moment, wises up, realises that it's just fine to admit you want a conventional married life with kids and a mortgage and goes ahead and gets those things.  Because make no mistake, despite the frank sexual content, Judd Apatow comedies are very socially conservative, as well as being very formulaic and occasionally very funny.  The only difference in the case of TRAINWRECK is that the immature character is a woman - as written and played by Amy Schumer. She's the one who's getting drunk and having one night stands, and feels weird when her boyfriend says he loves her for the first time. And the guys in the movie - including a brilliantly cast LeBron James - are the ones who aren't afraid to talk about their feelings and are generous in bed and want to get married.  That the movie is formulaic doesn't matter because it's still brilliantly written and acted. It's laugh-out-loud funny, it's not afraid to take its lead character to some dark places, and there's real chemistry between the romantic leads.  

Random-DVD Round-Up 4 - FRED: THE MOVIE

FRED: THE MOVIE is the infinitely irritating feature-length flick starring self-appointed YouTube sensation "Fred" aka teenager Lucas Cruikshank. Cruikshank's character is an infantile teen with a passion for day-glo clothes, who speaks in a speeded-up Chipmunk voice and has a two-year-old temper tantrum whenever things don't go his way. This might have been charming in the YouTube short-form but it is absolutely unbearable for 90 minutes. Shame on teen pop star Pixie Lott for jumping on its hopefully short-lived PR bandwagon. As for the movie - the colours are Day-Glo, the direction pedestrian, and the basic plot the same as any other teen comedy: the nerdy protagonist has to triumph over the neighbourhood bully to get the prettiest girl in high school. Frankly, I watched 20 minutes before switching off. Admittedly if the movie had taken a right-turn into a slasher flick wherein the main cast get nastily ripped limb from limb, it might have improved. I will never know. 

FRED: THE MOVIE was released as a TV movie in the US in September 2010 and was inexplicably given a theatrical release in the UK and Ireland in December. It is now available to rent and own.

12 ROUNDS - a movie so bad its been disowned by its screenwriter

12 ROUNDS is a piss-poor, formulaic, buddy-cop action flick, that has the cast and production values of a B-movie. It's basically a break-out vehicle for WWE wrestling star John Cena - a man so massive the screenwriter actually makes a joke about him being "freakishly large". And speaking of the screenwriter, despite the IMDB credit for Daniel Kunka, the flick was actually been written by Shane Black, the guy who wrote the massively superior Lethal Weapon movies and, more recently, the quirky thriller, KISS KISS BANG BANG. 12 ROUNDS is a humourless caricature of all that made the Lethal Weapon films great. Two humble beat-cops cum buddies (John Cena, Brian White) happen to intercept an international arms dealers (Aidan Gillan) when he's in New Orleans for the weekend. A year later, and the beat cops have been promoted to detective and the arms dealer has broken out of prison. In order to get revenge, he blows up the cop's house and kidnaps his girlfriend. The cops have to jump through 12 tasks in order to see her again. Yes, yes, despite the faux-realism of the hand-held Bourne-esque action sequences, this plot is incredibly, implausibly contrived. There are lots of chase scenes, none of which set the pulse racing, some mediocre acting, and an entirely predictable denouement. Seriously, just stay home and watch LETHAL WEAPON or BEVERLY HILLS COP and see how this stuff is supposed to be done.

12 ROUNDS was released earlier this year in Australia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Canada, the USA, Egypt, Bahrain, Kuwait, New Zealand, the UAE, South Africa, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Russia, the Ukraine, Finland and Mexico. It is currently on release in the UK, Germany and Portugal. It opens in June in South Korea, Turkey and Romania; on July 31st in Italy; and in Bolivia, Brazil and France in mid-August.