THE JUDGE

So I suppose when you earn shedloads of cash for a major studio as Iron Man, you get to create whichever vanity project you like.  And for Robert Downey Junior, it's this polished but ultimately overlong and unexciting thriller, THE JUDGE.  The self-consciously quality product start RDJ as a flash lawyer in a mid-life crisis who returns to his home town, where his cranky dad, the titular judge, is suspected for a hit-and-run murder. Naturally, the super-smart son, John Grisham-like in his smarmy brilliance, reconnects with his estranged father through the medium of sun-dappled flashbacks with trite piano music. There are two points when I thought the movie would pick up its pace and intensity. The first is when Grace Zabriskie, famous to Lynch fans as the hysterical mother of Laura Palmer, turns up as the enraged mother of the victim. At the point, the movie had the chance to do something new and off the charts, but no. The second point was when Billy Bob Thornton turned up as the prosecutor.  But not this was just high polish high profile stunt casting, and BBT just phoned his performance in.  So here's where the movie jumps the shark. About an hour in, the mid-life crisis lawyer meets his old flame, the wonderful Vera Farming, and she turns out to be the mum of the teenage waitress (Leighton Meester) he just banged.  It's not just that this is a cheesy and skeezy plot line but that it shows a complete lack of directorial judgment on the part of David Dobkin (THE WEDDING CRASHERS). Why try so hard to make a sleek, serious courtroom drama and then just kill its tone with a cheap and awkward gag?  The only ONLY time I've ever seen a successful and funny courtroom drama was MY COUSIN VINNY and this ain't that.

THE JUDGE has a running time of 141 minutes and is rated R.  The film is on global release.

iPad Round-Up 1 - THE CHANGE-UP

THE CHANGE-UP is a piss-poor reworking of the FREAKY FRIDAY/BIG body-switch movie genre.  In this instance, Jason Bateman's weary lawyer-father switches with Ryan Reynold's playboy soft-porn actor.  Despite the frequent cursing and references to explicit sex acts, this is basically a deeply conservative movie in which the father learns to appreciate his wife and children and the playboy learns to grow up and start acting like a responsible member of society.  The script, by Jon Lucas Scott Moore (THE HANGOVER) contains very few genuine moments of humour, but a lot of cursing and physical gross out humour that fails to fly. The direction from David Dobkin (WEDDING CRASHERS) is workmanlike. Reynolds and Bateman are actually quite good at mimicking each other's speech styles but in service of a weak script it's all for nothing.  Avoid. 

Script 

THE CHANGE-UP was released in late summer and autumn 2011. It is available to rent and own.

FRED CLAUS - great cast undone by lazy script

I think Vince Vaughn is really funny. I've thought this ever since my best friend at college, James "Fast Jimmy" Gibbons introduced me to SWINGERS. Suddenly it became clear where Jimbo's fast-talking, charming, fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants routine came from. Since then, Vaughn's career has been hit and miss. He's been hired as the light relief in a bunch of genre movies (such as MR AND MRS SMITH) and made a disastrous lead in the horrible PSYCHO remake. I think the problem is that he's usually cast rather lazily: film-makers think his innate charm will enliven weak, derivative scripts. What this means is that Vaughn, like Ryan Reynolds, is usually the only saving grace in the mediocre movies he stars in. Up till now, the one exception to this rule was DODGEBALL - a truly hillarious movie.

I'm afraid that FRED CLAUS falls solidly into that cumbersome middle ground of weak comedies in which Vaughn fans find themselves scratching their heads wondering why he didn't demand a re-write. In general, the plot is predictable and derivative, the characters are two-dimensional, and the movie is painfully thin on laughs. Worst of all, the movie is way too long for a kid-friendly Christmas flick, no matter what the quality of the picture.

Just to fulfil the basic requirements, I should clue you into the big Concept. Fred Claus is a nice kid who becomes embittered when his brother Nicholas gets all the attention. Eventually, Nick becomes Santa Claus, and as part of the deal, he and his family become immortal. Fast forward several hundred years and Fred (Vaughn) is forced to go cap in hand to the North Pole and make up with his brother Santa (Giamatti). He teaches the elves to loosen up, they fall behind on their schedule, and the big bad corporate man (Spacey) threatens to close them down. As one might expect, it all turns out for the best for the characters, which is more than can be said for the honest ticket-buying public. One can only wonder why the producers spent so much money on a high-octane cast and so little on the script.

FRED CLAUS is on release in the US, Canada, Australia, Italy, Singapore, Japan, the Philippines, Germany, South Korea, Denmark, Italy, the UK and Japan. It opens next week in Belgium, Greece, the Netherlands, Iceland, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. It opens in Christmas week in Russia, Slovenia, Estonia, France and Bulgaria. Finally, it rolls into Egypt on January 16th.

THE WEDDING CRASHERS - 50% mediocre frat-pack comedy, 50% damp squib chick flick

I really tried to like THE WEDDING CRASHERS. I even watched it a second time on DVD just to give it another chance. I reckon Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are some of the funniest actors working today. In fact, Owen Wilson's role in the fantastic romantic comedy THE WENDELL BAKER STORY helped push it into my movie pantheon. So it saddens me to say that this movie is a real let-down. Not a real stinker, just very very mediocre. Let me break it down for you. The first half is a weak frat-boy comedy. Vaughn and Wilson play two guys who crash weddings to pick up ch*cks. The jokes are okay but not laugh-out loud funny - certainly not as good as anything in OLD SCHOOL. Then, about half way through, the movie loses its nerve and switches into a super-cliche love story. Unfortunately, having attempted to create comedy caricatures for the previous 45 minutes, it is hard to empathise with the main characters when they go into the "love story" phase of the film. Eventually the movie just runs out of steam and not even a cameo from Will Ferrell can save it. Worse still, the movie commits the cardinal sin of hiring the Don that is Christopher Walken and then giving him absolutely nothing to do. All in all, having spent forty million dollars, all the producers have done is guarantee the brief popularity of the phrase "ERRONEOUS!"

THE WEDDING CRASHERS is now available on region 1 and region 2 DVD, but seriously, just rent OLD SCHOOL instead.