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.

SAUSAGE PARTY

SAUSAGE PARTY is a very funny very smutty animated comedy by the team that brought you THE INTERVIEW and PINEAPPLE EXPRESS. Evan Goldberg and Seth Rogen make R rated comedies that contain a lot of truth and some things you just can't believe are being put on screen.  To wit, they have a Holocaust joke in the opening 3 minutes of this film, the first of many, liberal use of the C word, and a plot that basically hinges on a radical atheistic debunking of religion and breaking the fourth wall.

The conceit is that all the characters are foodstuffs being sold in a supermarket.  They believe that the Great Beyond lies on the other side of the supermarket doors, with benevolent Gods (humans) caring for them in paradise. The drama begins when a jar of mustard is returned and reveals the shocking truth that humans EAT food.  This prompts our hero and heroine, a sausage and a bun, to escape their trolley and go in search of the real story from a bottle of fire-water and his baked side-kicks.  Meanwhile, another hot dog is trying to find his way back to the store and stumbles onto some handy scientific knowledge from a Stephen Hawking-style piece of gum.

THIS IS THE END

THIS IS THE END is a ludicrously indulgent comedy made by the folks who brought you PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, and less impressively, SUPERBAD. It basically features a group of real life Hollywood actors and comedians - Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jay Baruchel, Jonah Hill, Danny McBride and Craig Robinson - who are partying at Franco's house when the Apocalypse begins.  The movie sees them whole up in house while the world goes to shit, until they're forced out to face their final judgement.   The actors all play fictionalised versions of themselves, which allows screenwriters and directors Evan Goldberg and Rogen to satirise Hollywood excess and solipsism. I loved this opening act, with its sly in-jokes about the actors' box office failures and each actors' media persona.  James Franco is game, allowing references to rumours that he's gay, although I thought the depiction of Michael Cera as a coke-head was just bizarre rather than actually funny.  And even after they hole up in Franco's house, I liked the idea that these guys would have absolutely no survival skills, but would amuse themselves by Sweding a PINEAPPLE EXPRESS sequel.

The intellectual problem with THIS IS THE END is its hypocrisy.  It's a movie that satirises the naval-gazing self-indulgence of Hollywood, but is itself something of an indulgent vanity project.  One can only hope that the writers were aware of this, but I detected more self-congratulation that rapier-like wit in their puppyish joy at inflicting the Backstreet Boys on the audience.  The more basic problem with THIS IS THE END is the uneven pacing and narrative drift that settles in when, well, the main characters settle in to Fort Franco.  To be sure, the movie gets an adrenaline shot to the heart in a superbly executed cameos from a deranged Emma Watson (how much more piquant than the more obvious first casting choice of Mila Kunis!) and Channing Tatum in a gimp suit.  But once the crew are holed up, there's literally not much to do other than bitch about how Danny McBride is selfishly eating all the food, and drawing straws for expeditions to forage for food. Oh, and a momentarily amusing but basically weak-ass EXORCIST spoof. The screenwriters have to clumsily force the crew outside just to bring the movie to a close, and the quite literal deus ex machina feels very weak and forced.  For religious groups to be offended is laughable - it gives the film too much credit.  I was far less offended by the notion that there's weed in heaven, than by having to listen to the Backstreet Boys.

So, THIS IS THE END is no SUPERBAD or YOUR HIGHNESS - offensive and puerile - nor is it THE GUILT TRIP - quite simply unfunny and tedious.  It has its moments, and  I certainly laughed out loud more than once.   In fact, I still laugh out loud when I think of the word "gluten".  But this is no instant cult classic a la PINEAPPLE EXPRESS, I can't help but wish that instead of this uneven film we'd had a genuine EXPRESS sequel with a properly honed script, characters I could fall in love with, and real narrative tension.

THIS IS THE END is on release in the USA, Canada, Jamaica and New Zealand. It opens on June 8th in the UK, Ireland, Spain and Vietnam. It opens on July 5th in Iceland, Portugal and Estonia; on July 18th in Indonesia, the Philippines, Australia, the Dominican Republic, Italy, Malaysia, Singapore and Uruguay; on August 1st in Greece; on August 8th in Croatia and Ecuador; on August 16th in Colombia; on August 22nd in Hungary, Israel and Austria and on August 29th in Germany and the Netherlands. It opens on September 5th in Slovakia and Slovenia; on September 11th in Egypt, France and Switzerland, Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Syria, the UAE, Latvia, Poland, Romania, South Africa and Turkey; on September 18th in Belgium, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Russia, Serbia, Taiwan, Thailand, the Ukraine, Kenya, Lithuania, and Nigeria; on September 27th in Hong Kong, South Korea, Brazil, Bulgaria, Finland, and Norway. It opens in India on October 4th; in Sweden on October 25th; in Denmark on November 14th; in Chile on November 28th; in Venezuela on November 29th and in Peru on December 5th.

THIS IS THE END is rated R in the USA and has a running time of 107 minutes.

GOON

I neither know nor care about ice hockey, but I loved GOON!  It's a wonderfully warm-hearted, foul-mouthed comedy, apparently based on the true story of a polite, sweet kid who couldn't really skate but could really fuck people up with fists.  This is apparently a totally acknowledged and accepted part of hockey -  a sport which is, according to this flick, as much to do with taking a pounding as mad skills with a stick and puck.  If only 10% of the violence on screen happens in real matches, I have new found respect for the mad bastards playing it.  Our particular mad bastard - the goon of the title - is Doug Glatt (Seann William Scott aka Stifler).  Patronised by his college-educated family, Doug stumbles into minor league hockey and discovers that, for once, he's needed and praised for doing what he does best. To be sure, he needs to come to terms with the fact that his parents will never really get it, and conquer the anger of his burnt out, mad-skilled room-mate, Laflamme (Marc-Andre Grondin), not to mention beat the crap out of retiring Goon Emeritus, Ross Rhea (Liev Schrieber).  But through it all, he remains the same sweet lunk he always was.

I love the script for its perfect balance of insane violence and right-on liberal intolerance for fag jokes. I love the way the sweet romance is balanced by plenty of gritty observations about life in working-class snow-bound towns and piss-stained tour buses.  Most of all, I love the counter-casting in almost every role.  Jay Baruchel, typically the sweet geek, becomes the wise-cracking, R-rated best friend.  Seann William Scott, typically the R-rated best friend, becomes the sweet-hearted hero.  Liev Schrieber - I mean, serious thespian Liev Schreiber - becomes the muscle-headed retiree.  And best of all, we have Alison Pill - who invests so much messed-up good-hearted flakiness into her role as Eva, that we can't but help routing for her and Doug.

Kudos to director Michael Dowse (IT'S ALL GONE PETE TONG) and screenwriters Jay Baruchel (TROPIC THUNDER) and Evan Goldberg (50/50, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS).  This movies was totally unexpectedly hilarious and heart-warming!

GOON played Toronto 2011 and is currently on release in the UK and Ireland. It goes on release in Canada on January 24th.  It is available on VOD in the US on February 24th and goes on limited released on March 30th.

THE GREEN HORNET - in which Hollywood pisses on my eiderdown once more

I am HUGELY disappointed by THE GREEN HORNET. I know it had a "troubled" journey to our screens, with Kevin Smith's scripts hacked and directors dropping out like so many milk-teeth. But when it got to the final credit list, I was full of anticipation. After all, this was a superhero movie that was going to be set square in the tradition of fond mockery - the tradition that produced the brilliantly funny KICK-ASS and genre-pastiches like PINEAPPLE EXPRESS. And who better to mock fondly than director Michel Gondry - the guy behind the wonderfully sweet, adorably goofy BE KIND, REWIND, not to mention quirkier, stranger, more brilliantly crazy THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP. The cast looked fly too - the newly trim Seth Rogen - hilarious in PINEAPPLE EXPRESS was going to bring that child-like enthusiasm and general all-round good-egg persona to the role of Britt Reid/The Green Hornet, playboy millionaire turned masked-crime-fighter. Cameron Diaz - always willing to take the piss out of herself - was going to play the love interest, Lenore Case. We had the promise of INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS' Chrisoph Waltz as the evil villain Chudnofsky. And best of all for Battlestar Galactica geeks, we had Edward James "Adama" Olmos as the editor of the Daily Sentinel. Okay, so I'd never heard of the Jay Chou, guy who plays The Hornet's sidekick, Kato, but I was willing to roll with it. So there it was - I was all ready for a superhero pastiche/homage full of good jokes, ridonkulous super-weapons and a general good-time.

But what did I get? Joke-free boredom. And without jokes, all this movie becomes is a Batman/Superman knock-off. Derivative, predictable, silly, emotionally involving, and absolutely no stakes. And when the jokes don't work you have to blame either the script or the actors or, in the case of physical humour, the director. So, Seth Rogen, Evan Goldberg, Jay Chou, Cameron Diaz, Christoph Waltz, Michel Gondry, I know want you to go and stand in the corner and think VERY carefully about what you've done. Especially Gondry. I mean, I am genuinely amazed that Gondry even knows how to direct something this banal.

Evidently, somewhere in Hollywood, in some drawer, there is a Kevin Smith script for THE GREEN HORNET that is frackin' amazing. Somewhere, years ago, in some producer's office, there was a dream of a brilliantly witty, action-filled movie. The dream, ladies and gentlemen, is dead.

P.S. I got so angry when I was writing this review that I forgot to mention the biggest insult of all! This movie has been retro-fitted with 3D after principal photography was completed. The result is a film that costs an extra few pounds to see, and where the only material impact of 3D is that it looks several shades more dull than if you were watching it without the glasses.  There are no cool action shots that are enhanced by it. There's no immersive, subtle enhancement of depth of field. Just cynical commercial decision-making at its most brazen.

THE GREEN HORNET is on release in Belgium, Chile, Egypt, France, Belgium, Chile, Egypt, France, Switzerland, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Austria, Canada, Estonia, India, Spain, the UK, the USA and Venezuela. It opens next weekend in Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and Japan. It opens on the 28th January in Greece, Singapore and Italy. It opens on February 3rd in Russia.

James Franco is a revelation in PINEAPPLE EXPRESS

Much to our surprise, Chairman Phil and I laughed our asses off throughout PINEAPPLE EXPRESS. We'd both liked THE FORTY-YEAR OLD VIRGIN but more recent Apatow creations had been subject to the law of diminishing returns, culminating in the fatefully titled SUPERBAD. Added to that, the programme notes were full of pretentious wank from Apatow et al about what the movie was trying to do. Our hearts sank. I was unsure that any stoner movie could live up to the brilliance of LEBOWSKI or whether Seth Rogen would be able to exist on screen without annoying the frack out of me. Well, sometimes in cinema, it's wonderful to be wrong!

Of course, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS isn't as good as LEBOWSKI. Then again, it's not really what I would call a stoner movie. Okay, the two lead characters are a pot dealer and his client; they're on the lam after witnessing a drug-gang murder; and they're life problems stem from being wasted; and a lot of the humour rests on taking hits and driving while under the influence......But seriously, even after all that, this movie is really a spoof of cop-buddy-movies like LETHAL WEAPON and 48 HOURS. To that end, writers Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg send up the inherent homo-eroticism in all buddy movies by making most of the characters ludicrously camp and having the kind of "aw, gee, gosh, I really love ya, buddy" conversations that never actually happen in real life!

The script is absolutely spot on - superbly funny at every turn. And in terms of the movie's technical aspects, you have to love the synth heavy pastiche 70s soundtrack. But what really lifts the film are the performances. This starts with a hysterical cameo by Bill Hader as a soldier in the 50s testing weed for the US government. Seth Rogen does his usual thing as a semi-functional dope smoker, but the scene-stealers are Danny McBride as the camp, drug-dealer Red, and James Franco as the drug-dealer Saul. James Franco is an absolute revelation in this role, and I can't help but feeling that his pin-up good looks have somewhat derailed his career into banal romantic roles, when in reality he should be a comedy star.

PINEAPPLE EXPRESS isn't a perfect comedy. The final shoot-out at the warehouse goes on way too long, and let's face it, despite the real attempt by the film-makers to show genuine stakes, we never really doubt how the movie's going to work out. But in the final scene in a diner, where the protagonists relive their experiences and joke about their scrapes, you realise just what a great time you've had.

PINEAPPLE EXPRESS is on release in the US and Australia. It opens in the UK on September 12th; in Iceland and Turkey on September 19th; in Estonia on October 3rd; in Finland on October 10th; in the Netherlands, Singapore and Venezuela on October 17th; in Germay, Russia and Sweden on October 24th; in Denmark on October 31st; in France on November 12th; in Egypt and Spain on November 19th; in Belgium, Argetina and Italy on November 26th.

SUPERBAD - 'nuff said

I thought I was going to LOVE Superbad. Puerile humour, geek gags - it's my thing. But to my surprise I found this teen gross-out comedy deeply deeply unfunny, implausible and occasionally offensive. The basic plot is that three high school students need to get their hands on some booze in order to impress and therefore score with hot chicks at a party. This is all fine - it's practically the staple of the teen comedy - geeks desperate to score. But what irked me was that none of the lead characters was remotely likeable in the way that John Hughes leads were always sympathetic. Michael Cera's Evan is weak-willed and ineffectual. Jonah Hill's Seth is just a selfish vulgarian: Cartman without the redeeming humour. Christopher Mintz-Plasse's Fogell has neither the comic timing nor the capacity to inspire sympathy in the way that Anthony Michael Hall's geeks always did. I don't particularly mind all the swearing either, except that it is to no effect. Seth wears a Richard Pryor T-shirt early on in the film and it just served to remind me how when Pryor swore it was because he was really really angry! Not just whining. I also found the menstrual blood gag to be plain unfunny and borderline offensive. So what can I say? I just don't understand the hype about this film.

SUPERBAD is on release in Canada, the USA and the UK. It opens in Australia, Portugal, Denmark, Italy, Sweden, Israel and Iceland later in September. It opens in Germany, Russia, Latvia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Brazil, Hungary, Singapore, Estonia, Spain, Belgium and France in October. It opens in the Netherlands, Finland, Turkey, Argentina and Norway in November.