CARRY-ON**

With CARRY-ON, director Jaume Collet-Serra (BLACK ADAM) delivers a po-faced, humourless, holiday-themed action thriller that is competent but never thrilling.  Taron Egerton (KINGSMAN) plays an aimless loser TSA agent co-opted by a mercenary (Jason Bateman - Arrested Development) who wants to smuggle a nerve agent onto a plane on Christmas Eve. Cue confused looks from co-workers and pregnant girlfriend/colleague as our hero starts muttering to himself and acting weird.  Luckily a sparky black policewoman (Danielle Deadwyler - TILL) - following our recent trend from WICKED LITTLE LETTERS and VENGEANCE MOST FOWL - realises something is up.  No prizes for guessing how it resolves.

I give it two stars from some genuinely good banter between Bateman and Egerton in the first act, with Bateman needling Egerton's TSA agent for his lack of ambition. But where's the warmth?  This film probably suffers from the fact that I recently rewatched the original DIE HARD. In that film we had jokes, we had catchphrases, we had actual relationship peril between our working class guy and his business executive wife.  We had a properly iconic villain.  This film lives in DIE HARD's shadow with its basic plot beats and concept, but feels so much more drab.

CARRY-ON is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 119 minutes. It was released on Netflix earlier this month.

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE is a disappointingly piss-poor action-comedy from the director of the infinitely more amusing and heart-warming WE'RE THE MILLERS, Rawson Marshall Thurber. It stars Dwayne Johnson as a formerly fat bullied schoolkid turned muscle-bound CIA agent accused of killing his partner (Aaron Johnson) and stealing secret files.  He turns up at the house of a former high school jock (Kevin Hart) now living a banal suburban life as an accountant.  At first, his friend appears to be naive and lovable, but then morphs into something seemingly scary and unhinged, before Hart's character realises that he's actually being framed.  High-jinks ensue.  The problem with this film is that a cameo from Jason Bateman apart, it's not really that funny, and there's no convincing relationship between the two male leads as there was with, say, 21 JUMP STREET.  The result is a film that plods along in a fairly banal way, culminating in a high school reunion that's meant to be cathartic for the former fat kid. But even this wannabe emotional and uplifting moment falls flat. One to avoid. 

CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE has a running time of 107 minutes and is rated PG-13. The film is on global release.

ZOOTOPIA aka ZOOTROPOLIS

ZOOTOPIA/ZOOTROPOLIS is a pointed but obvious commentary about racism and sexism in supposedly multicultural western society. As such, its trenchant criticism comes at an apposite time in world politics.  But it rather wants to have its cake and eat it.  And I'm not sure it's any fun for kids. Because, after all, this is a kids animated feature!

The movie comes from directors Rich Moore (WRECK IT RALPH) and Byron Howard (TANGLED).  It posits a world full of anthropomorphic animals who live in apparent harmony because they have evolved beyond the predator/prey instinct. This is meant to be a world in which anyone can achieve anything - a spin on the American Dream. Of course, the real world is not, in the words of Captain Bogo, "some cartoon musical where you sing a little song and all your insipid dreams magically come true. So let it go." In other words, this movie is a clash between those hokey Disney values of yore, and our more post-modern cynical sensibilities. 

THS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU

THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU is a brutally unfunny and deadly dull dramedy from director Shawn Levy (DATE NIGHT) and writer-novelist Jonathan Tropper (BANSHEE). The high concept is that four adult siblings are forced by their mother to sit shiva for their recently deceased father, and that in the course of those seven days of mourning they will explore their relationships.

The movie stars and is told from the perspective of Jason Bateman's character Judd. His secret is that his wife has left him and over the course of the week he's going to have a kind of mid-life crisis and resolution with the help of the conveniently available and understanding hometown girl (Rose Byrne.)  Next up is his sister Wendy (Tina Fey) trapped in an unhappy marriage. Then comes Judd's brother Paul (Corey Stoll - HOUSE OF CARDS) who's wife is struggling to get pregnant, raising tensions with Judd who is her ex.  Finally we have youngest brother Phillip (Adam Driver - GIRLS) who's widely regarded by the rest of the family as feckless and irresponsible but who actually turns out to be the most grounded and self-aware, even in his relationship with a much older women (Connie Britton - NASHVILLE).  

This is that kind of gentle middle-class dramedy in which all problems involve marriage and can be fixed with a simple bonding session over a mildly subversive drug and tied together with a politically correct bow at the end.  There's no deep emotional truth here, only an attempt at pretending to be interested in it.  The acting is fine, the lens-work workmanlike, and the characters utterly unmemorable. I imagine this film might appeal to the kind of people who enjoyed EAT, PRAY, LOVE.

THIS IS WHERE I LEAVE YOU has a running time of 103 minutes and is rated R. The movie played Toronto 2014 and was released earlier this year in the USA, UAE, Slovenia, Chile, Singapore, Bahamas, Canada, Mexico, Taiwan, Trinidad and Tobago, Aruba, Switzerland, Colombia, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Austria, Panama, Paraguay, Spain, Finland and South Africa. It opened this weekend in the UK, Ireland, Latvia, Turkey, Australia, Croatia, Israel and New Zealand. It opens in November in India, Czech Republic, Portugal, Brazil and Italy; in December in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Slovakia, Ukraine, Cyprus, Poland, Romania, Argentina, Uruguay, Bulgaria, Philippines, Peru and Serbia; in January 2015 in Denmark, Norway and Belgium.

HORRIBLE BOSSES 2

The HORRIBLE BOSSES sequel reunites our three downtrodden men (Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis and Jason Batemen) in their mission to go into business for themselves producing a MacGuffin-like shower attachment.  Early  on they get screwed over by unscrupulous billionaire played by a hilarious but typecast Christoph Waltz (DJANGO UNCHAINED) and decide to reap their revenge by taking his son (Chris Pine - STAR TREK) hostage.  The son decides to go in on the plot in a twist reminiscent of the brilliant 1980s comedy RUTHLESS PEOPLE.  From there it gets iteratively more complicated as we get backstabbing and double crossing also involving Jamie Foxx's Jones and Jennifer Aniston's sex addict dentist. 

I didn't like the original movie and I like this even less. The plot is overly complicated and derivative.  The humour is cheap and I didn't laugh out loud once.  It just felt like the whole thing was a convoluted exercise in allowing Oscar winning actors the opportunity to do cameos beyond their comfort zone.  It's also a dumb concept. Whatever success the original movie had was in seeing three ordinary guys deal with a relatable if exaggerated real life situation - having a horrible boss. By turning these schmo's into master criminals you put them in an un-relatable and absurd situation. You take away the franchise's USP.

HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 has a running time of 108 minutes and is rated R.  The movie 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.

iPad Round-Up 3 - HORRIBLE BOSSES

HORRIBLE BOSSES has a simple concept.  Three likeable guys have three heinous bosses. One is a coke-head arse; one is a nympho; and the other is an egomaniacal dick. And so, they hire a hit man to despatch them.  Of course it goes horribly wrong - cue capers, shenanigans and laughs. Only problem is, HORRIBLE BOSSES isn't funny - just embarrassing.  Directed by documentarian Seth Gordon (THE KING OF KONG, SHUT UP & SING) from a script by Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley and Jonathan M Goldstein (all of whom have a background in sitcoms), the movie just never takes off.  And I'm not really sure why. After all, we know that the three likeable guys can be funny - Charlie Day (IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA), Jason Sudeikis (HALL PASS) and Jason Bateman (THE SWITCH).   I guess maybe it's the way the horrible bosses have been drawn and cast that lets the movie down.  Jennifer Aniston is a talented comedienne, as her time in FRIENDS proves, but by now her media personality as the dumped and slightly desperate ex-wife has started to colour how she comes across in film, and her performance as an aggressive nympho is just plain embarrassing. Kevin Spacey, serious man of the London stage, just can't do broad comedy as written in this film. And Colin Farrell as the cokehead just isn't given enough comedic material to work with. It's as though the writers thought that just giving him a comb-over was enough. 

HORRIBLE BOSSES was released in summer 2011 and is now available to rent and own.

iPad Round-Up 3 - PAUL

What is it about British comedians that they go to America, garner a little success, and then get the urge to mock the key difference between America and Britain - Christian fundamentalism. Don't get me wrong - people who believe in Intelligent Design give me the heebie-jeebies - but there does seem something rather odd, and pathological even - in these movies that delight in undermining religious belief. I speak here of Ricky Gervais' THE INVENTION OF LYING and, now, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg's new film, PAUL.

The plot is simple.  Frost and Pegg play two best friends and sci-fi geeks who attend a convention in the US. They pick up an alien who needs to get home, voiced by Seth Rogen, and so set up a comedy road-movie that could've been a clever satire on genre films, just in the same way that SHAUN OF THE DEAD brilliantly spiked zombie movies, or HOT FUZZ spiked cop films.  But  no, Frost and Pegg add a fourth character to their movie - a religious fundamentalist (Kristen Wiig) whose entire world-view is over-turned by her realisation that there is life on other planets.  

Of course this could've been as funny as anything in HOT FUZZ or SHAUN, but somehow - maybe the sensitivity of this material in the US, or maybe the real Hollywood money behind the picture - dulled their wit. (Or maybe it's that Frost and Pegg are without their usual collaborator - Edgar Wright?)  There are still flashes of the kind of ribald, laugh-out-loud comedy that we got in the earlier films, but overall this seems like a much tamer, and less memorable affair.  That unmistakeable damp squib sensation that settles in at about the hour mark isn't helped by a rather flat cameo by Jason Bateman as the spooky Fed, and can't be saved by a cameo from Sigourney Weaver. I also feel that Seth Rogen is straying into the territory occupied by Jack Black - that of always playing himself - even when voicing a CGI alien. 

PAUL was released earlier this year in the UK, Ireland, Belgium, France, Canada, the US, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, the Ukraine, Australia, Croatia, Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, Hungary, Malaysia, Singapore, Iceland, Italy, the Philippines, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Lithuania. It is currently on release in Sweden, Thailand and Turkey. It opens in Spain on July 22nd.

Random DVD Round-Up 4 - THE SWITCH

THE SWITCH is not half as bad as I thought it would be. From the marketing campaign, I'd written it off as one of those Hollywood romantic-comedies featuring an actress too old to really be playing the ditzy chick, given a new shot at features with plots featuring getting knocked up. (Think J-Lo in THE BACK-UP PLAN). Worse still, having been bitten too often by risible, banal Jennifer Aniston rom-coms - distracted by her botox and repelled by the smell of desperation coming off the screen - I was simply in no mood for it. But I have to say that, basically thanks to a rather restrained performance by Jason Bateman, I rather liked it! 

 Directed by Josh Gordon and Will Speck (BLADES OF GLORY) the movie starts off as a crude frat-boy gross-out comedy but morphs into something altogether more thoughtful. The opening scenes take us through the mechanics of the set-up with a sort of knockabout humour that entirely failed to connect with me. Kassie (Jennifer Aniston) has a party to celebrate getting artificially inseminated by hunky Roland (Patrick Wilson). Her best friend Wally (Jason Bateman) thinks she's making a mistake, gets drunk, accidentally knocks over Roland's semen and replaces it with his own. Years later, Kassie moves back to the city with her little kid - an introspective odd-ball, and as Wally and Kassie tentatively rekindle their friendship, he starts to realise that he's the kids father. We then get what is actually some rather touching character-driven drama as Wally opens up about his own childhood to the kid, and breaks Kassie and Roland up. 

There's a lot of mono-dimensional character-writing in the film, to be sure. Poor Patrick Wilson has little to do except be buff - Juliette Lewis' balls-out craziness is entirely unused - and Jeff Goldblum is the cliché promiscuous but basically lonely older sleazebag. But somehow, underneath all that, we get Jason Bateman's character really baring his soul. And yes, I think on balance, watching this film is probably worth it for Bateman. 

THE SWITCH was released in Autumn 2010 and is now available to rent and own.

Random DVD Round-Up 1 - COUPLES RETREAT

COUPLE'S RETREAT is a truly piss-poor alleged comedy starring Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Jon Favreau and Faizon Love as middle-aged men frustrated by middle-aged family life. So they and their wives (Malin Akerman, Kristen Bell, Kristin Davis, Kali Hawk)) take off for a tropical island and a weekend of intense marital therapy run by a spectacularly mis-cast Jean Reno. I just don't know where to begin in terms of reviewing it. It's a movie so devoid of comedic inspiration that it simply falls flat in every scene. I didn't care about any of the characters. I didn't find any of the verbal or physical humour funny. And I wanted the film to end. Quickly. Save yourself the trouble and rent Favreau and Vaughn's genius early pic, SWINGERS instead, and remember a time when they were able to create genuinely sympathetic characters and laugh-out-loud funny lines.

COUPLES RETREAT was released in autumn 2010 and is now available to rent and own.

London Film Fest Day 9 - EXTRACT

What is EXTRACT doing in the London Film Festival? It's not a high-brow art film looking for UK distribution. It's not the latest movie from an acknowledged auteur - Jarmusch, Egoyan, Haneke. And it's not a high profile glitzy premiere designed to lure the sponsors - a necessary evil. Nope. EXTRACT is an enjoyable but ultimately lightweight comedy from Mike Judge. Worse still, it's less conceptually interesting than IDIOCRACY, if better executed.

So, let's approach this as if it were just another Saturday night movie. Jason Bateman stars a successful businessman called Joel. On the surface he has it all: great house, great car, pretty wife, and his own business - a flavouring factory. But everything's going wrong for Joel. His staff are morons; his wife won't sleep with him; his neighbour's a creep; and he's falling for a con woman. Worst of all, his best friend (Ben Affleck) keeps advising him to do drugs and other crazy shit.

As the movie opens you think the con woman (Mila Kunis) is going to be the star but she drops off the radar. Then the movie almost becomes a bromance with Joel as Dante from CLERKS and Ben Affleck as his Randall. (Without the swearing and Star Wars jokes, of course.) It all feels a bit PG Kevin Smith. Stuff happens; Affleck, J K Simmons and the guy who plays Brad the gigolo are funny; a few laughs are had and it all winds up happily enough.

Not bad but nothing special either.

And will someone please give Mila Kunis a decent part?

EXTRACT was released in the US and Canada in September. It opens in Iceland on November 20th and in the Netherlands on April 29th 2010.

London Film Fest Day 5 - UP IN THE AIR

My friends typically work for former-I-banks, private equity houses and fund managers, and travel to at least one European or long-haul destination per week. They are nice, interesting people but every time we get together the conversation at some point descends into comparing airline frequent flyer programmes, blackberries and check-listing the best restaurants and concierges in various European capitals. We are the cohort that knows exactly the quickest route through any airport and always turn left upon boarding. But that's not all there is to life. Some have kids - some an unhealthy obsession with movies. We are all aware that the big corporates target insecure over-achievers: smart young graduates who will so identify with the corporate brand that their self-esteem lies in the coolness of their new laptop and how many miles they fly per year. It's as though the apparently elite status they have been sold compensates for working insane hours. Stick with it, kid, and one day you TOO can become a Lufthansa Hons member and make Managing Director. We too were once shiny bright 23 year olds, unleashed upon the world with dreams of summer houses and Porsche Cayennes. Ten years later, the 2001 dotcom crash and the credit crunch later, heartbreak, marriages, divorces have come and gone, and we'll settle. And no, it doesn't seem like failure.

I give you this little round-up to tell you that when it comes to reviewing UP IN THE AIR - the new romantic comedy from THANK YOU FOR SMOKING director Jason Reitman, I know whereof I speak, and I know whereof he speaks. Problem is, I think he's set up a straw man. The fact that he occasionally hits the mark with some biting dialogue doesn't make up for it.

Reitman's central character is a mono-dimensional corporate man called Bingham (Clooney). He's the classic air-miles junkie, happiest in the air, avoiding a real relationship with his family or a potential girlfriend at all costs. The movie is about how he reacts when he falls for a whip-smart woman who is just as career-focused as he is (Vera Farmiga). Along the way, he realises just what a shitty profession he is in (a consultant brought in to fire people) when he sees it afresh through the eyes of the new hire (Anna Kendrick). Reitman has Bingham go through one of those classic rom-com epiphanies, where the caricatured hard-ass central character realises it might actually be nice to have a relationship with someone. (See THE PROPOSAL, THE FAMILY STONE, MANAGEMENT et hoc genus omne). It even comes complete with a running through the night to tell the one you love that you love them scene. I only just forgave Reitman for that hackneyed move. The problem is that the really interesting dynamic isn't about ultra career focused people suddenly realising they'd like a relationship. It's about people, like the new hire, who do want both, know they want both, but can't seem to make it work out. That's the rub.

Anyways, let's be generous and grant that Jason Reitman's fictive career-focused lone wolf is credible and interesting. Given that, how does the movie work out? Well, I like the overall bleak tone, especially the final act twist. Totally brought it back from the rom-com vibe I was getting in the penultimate act. I also really like the way in which Reitman plays the scene between the career woman at 23 and the career woman at 33: very psychologically accurate and superbly done. Other than that, I thought the movie contained too much dead air, and much like THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, wasn't even in tone. Ultimately, I wasn't engaged by the characters, because the central struggle didn't seem real to me, and I thought Reitman didn't really have the balls to deal with the critique implicit in his subject matter of mass lay-offs. It all felt rather exploitative.

UP IN THE AIR played Toronto 2009. It opens in November in the USA. It opens in January 2010 in Australia, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK, Russia and Denmark. It opens in February 2010 in Mexico, Turkey, Hungary and Singapore. It opens in Finland on March 19th.

STATE OF PLAY - derivative, badly made, dull political thriller

I love political thrillers, and have liked the previous work of the writers behind STATE OF PLAY - Billy Ray (FLIGHTPLAN), Matthew Michael Carnahan (LIONS FOR LAMBS), and Tony Gilroy (DUPLICITY, MICHAEL CLAYTON,THE BOURNE MOVIES & THE DEVIL'S ADVOCATE). Unfortunately, these collective talents have turned in a script that, if one were being kind, might be accused of excessive nods to genre tropes, and if one were honest, would be accused of being derivative, lazy and predictable.

Russell Crowe plays an investigative journalist called Cal McAffry, who works on a Washington Post-style paper. We know he's a maverick reporter because, in lazy movie-shorthand, he's overweight, he needs a haircut and shower, his desk is a mess and he's mean to a newbie blogger, Della Fry, played by Rachel McAdams. He has a ballsy, fearless, old school, harrassed editor - is there ever any other type? - played by Helen Mirren. We know she's got balls of steel because she swears a lot. Then again, as soon as the cub reporter starts whimpering because she's being demoted, the apparently hard-nosed editor caves in. Where's the subtle power of Ben Bradlee is ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN - a movie that STATE OF PLAY overtly aspires to be? Cal McAffry has a friend who is a US Senator, Stephen Collins, crusading against the military-industrial complex, as represented by a Blackwater style company called Pointcorp. We know he's serious, earnest and a politician because he has a square jaw and bags under his eyes. His wooden acting may also be a marker of the essential superficiality of the political class, if we were still being generous. Cal and Stephen both dated a woman in college who Stephen later married, and cheated on with an intern who has since been found murdered. The wife is played by an age-appropriate delivery device - Robin Wright Penn - the intern is played by a red-head so we'll be able to pick her out easily in the CCTV footage.

From all this information, and given that I've told you that the writers are in awe of the great paranoid political thrillers of the 1970s, you should be able to piece together the plot. The politician is implicated in death of his young lover. Both were investigating multi-billion dollar government contracts. Could it be that greedy capitalist bastards did it? The movie is very much a standard-issue jigsaw puzzle. I knew whodunnit because I'd seen the infinitely superior British TV serial on which this movie is based. Doctor007 knew whodunnit about thirty minutes in because he has a brain and he's seen enough films like it.

Apart from the predictability and laziness of the plot and characterisations, I was deeply disappointed by the casting decisions and the production values. Russell Crowe, Robin Wright Penn and Ben Affleck are meant to be college contemporaries but Crowe looks a decade older than Affleck. I was sad to see the role of Dominic Foy cut down so much (although Jason Bateman was rather good in the role) and I was sad to see Ben Affleck's role become more two-dimensional. Worst of all, there was a lot of sloppy tech stuff that pulled me out of the film. Look out for some particularly ham-fisted photo-shopped pictures of Senator Affleck as an Iraqi war soldier. My god-daughter could do a more believable job of cutting and pasting a photo of one man's head onto another man's body. 

All in all, this movie is a cheap, serviceable thriller at best, and a pretentious, dull, derivative thriller at worst. Avoid.

STATE OF PLAY is on release in Canada, Iceland, Spain, Turkey, the USA and the UK. It opens in Egypt, Greece, Italy, South Korea, the UAE, Finland, Norway and Sweden next week. It opens on May 22nd in Japan and on May 29th in Australia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, New Zealand, Russia, Bulgaria, Denmark, Lithuania, Mexico and Romania. It opens on June 5th in Estonia; on June 12th in Singapore and Brazil; on June 18th in Argentina, Chile, Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal; on June 24th in France and on July 1st in Belgium.

SPOILER: Also, did anyone else find it a tad disappointing to have a movie aim at indicting the military-industrial complex but end up as a movie motivated by sexual jealousy?

The good news is that Will Smith's career can survive HANCOCK

I like Will Smith. He has a charming, amiable personality and he's brilliant at making wholesome family comedies. He's so damn charming he survived WILD, WILD WEST. So, claims that HANCOCK is going to do to Smith's career what THE LAST ACTION HERO did to Arnie are likely wide of the mark. Moreover, while HANCOCK is a deeply flawed movie, it's by no means a complete disaster.

The first half of the movie is actually a lot of fun. It's laugh-out loud funny and it contains cool special effects and a buddy relationship to believe in. Will Smith plays a reluctant superhero called Hancock. He feels unappreciated and reacts by being rude to the people he's helping. Hancock is transformed into a considerate, professional superhero by a warm-hearted PR man called Ray (Jason Bateman). It's wonderful to see our down-trodden hero finally get the public recognition he deserves.

Sadly, the second half of the movie is weird, rushed, logically flawed and completely different in tone to the first half of the film. This is motivated by an easily spotted plot twist. It's as though the screenwriters didn't have the balls to follow through on their premise: what happens when a superhero has as complicated an emotional life as your typical adult? Even more interestingly, they hint at, but don't have the balls to address fully, the issue of inter-racial dating. Instead, we get a fudged, rushed ending that makes no sense at all. And yes, I know superheroes are a fantasy but the rules of the game have to be consistent enough to support our willing suspension of disbelief.

HANCOCK is released this weekend in the USA, the UK, Canada, China, Egypt, Estonia, Iceland, Indonesia, South Korea, Argentina, Australia, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Singapore, Slovenia, Brazil, India and Venezuela. It opens the following weekend in Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Russia, Mexico and Poland. HANCOCK opens on July 16th in Denmark, Finland, Norway, Spain and Sweden. It opens in August in Turkey and Japan and in September in Italy and Greece.

Al's review of FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL

FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL is the latest romantic-comedy to bear the thumb-print of Judd Apatow (KNOCKED UP, THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN). In true Apatow-style, a geek is dumped by his gorgeous girlfriend. He goes on holiday to forget her, only to land up in the same hotel as her and her ludicrous new boyfriend, a Brit rocker played by Russell Brand. Despite Judd Apatow's involvement, this movie is basically a debutante effort, from director Nicholas Stoller and writer-lead actor Jason Segel. So, let's check out what Al, our Asia-Pac correspondent, makes of it all.....

As screenwriter, Jason Segel's idea of a story is to basically make it as complicated as possible. There's hardly a moment in the story anyone pauses to genuinely think: they're all swaggering around in this giant move-about because something new happens every five minutes. A whole lot of noise: not much meaning.

It's not all bad. Some of the jokes worked, but for every one of those you had 20 stinker gags seriously testing an already bored and quiet audience. You get a heap of low ones like "You sound like the women on Rock of Love-"I'll KILL YOU"-jokes like these seriously question whether there were any standards when it came to writing jokes for the film. The best jokes were no doubt the small ones-slipped into conversations and having little to do with anything. When Segel aims big or tries to pull off situational comedy, I couldn't help flinching, thinking that maybe I had inadvertently walked into a bad Ben Stiller film.

Most of the characters are self-absorbed and obnoxious loudmouths. Jonah Hill & Jack McBrayer (who plays Kenneth in 30 Rock) gave bewilderingly humorless performances and were painful to watch. Plus it didn't look like they were enjoying themselves either. Kristen Bell (who played Veronica Mars brilliantly throughout its 3-season run) is totally devoid of sex appeal in this supposedly sexual role,and is frustratingly whiny and tool-like (appearing right when Segel seems to have come to terms with the break-up, just to inspire another "hilarious" love run-around. Jason Segel himself seems determined to thoroughly humiliate himself for humor, constantly doing dumb things to get the story going (often into new territory). The only characters inspiring real laughs were Paul Rudd's light-headed surfer and Russell Brand's pompous Brit rocker who were both consistently funny and entertaining.

With the amount of comedy talent attached, FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL should've come out soaring, but the script's limp brand of humor was a damning curse - often immature and just plain unfunny. Also,the way the film goes bulldozing past things and never once considers developing on anything (that past 90 minutes, so many things have happened but it feels like story hasn't taken off). With a loose sense of purpose and no set of bearings, it falls way off the mark and doesn't come close to the ranks of Judd Appatow's previous efforts.

FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL was released this weekend in Australia, Iceland and the USA. It opens next weekend in Hungary, Russia, Estonia and the UK. It opens in May in Norway and Sweden; in June in France, Italy, Belgium, Germany and Spain; in July in the Netherlands, Denmark and Singapore; in August in Turkey and Mexico and in Argentina in September.

The Twelve Most Spine-Tinglingly Awesome Moments of 2007

It may be hard to believe when you read an excoriating review, but every time I sit down to watch a movie I do so in joyful hope. I can't explain how much I love cinema. Ever since I was a little girl there seemed to be something magical about a beam of light that transformed a negative into a living and breathing story. I also love the idea of shared experience. I grew up in a small town with a large Italian population and a larger cinema. When the Rocky movies played, the cinema manager, a suave Roger-Moore wannabe who wore a dinner jacket(!), opened up both the stalls and the circle. A thousand Italians cheered for Rocky as though they were watching a live bout. Outstanding! Later on I studied cinematography so as to disabuse myself of my obsession with cinema. I thought that if I knew the nuts and bolts, I'd forget about the magic. It didn't work. I became more obsessed than ever, except that now my infantile fascination was girded with a respect for the technical expertise underlying every movie - even the cyncical cash-ins.

So in a rare annual moment of warmth and optimism, here follow those flashes of brilliance that reminded me - amidst the sequels, threequels and hopeless failures - just how wonderful cinema can be. Note that this list is significantly different from my Best Films of 2007 list (found in a drop-down box in the side-bar). Even piss-poor flicks can have moments of inspiration - which is a faintly hopeful thought.

The first moment is totally juvenile and comes from the Danish animated kids flick, TERKEL IN TROUBLE. I knew I was in insane place - a cross between SOUTH PARK and GRANGE HILL - but I didn't realise how shamelessly brilliant the movie was until the sidekick sang the following love song: "I think I've been been blind until today, when you suddenly looked at me and said 'Fuck off and die - you're too ugly for me and your mum goes for a hundred dollars,' you said it straight to my face". Pure Comedy Gold.

The second moment is the hysterical cameo from Jason Bateman in SMOKIN' ACES. Altogether, this was a much better caper flick than we had any right to expect but Bateman really stood-out in a great ensemble class. He really suits those sleazy, frayed at the edges roles.

From the ridiculous to the sublime, at the end of January I got to see Sergei Bondarchuk's WAR AND PEACE for the first time, and not just to see it on DVD but on the big screen at the Barbican. The battle scenes, where the Red Army don period costume and literally fire canon, were outstanding, as was the entire film. In fact, for all sorts of reasons, Bondarchuk's WAR AND PEACE is my favourite movie of all time.

Next, as a confirmed anti-vegetarian, there was something mischevious and delicious in seeing a camera segue from a cute little piglet to a nice thick slice of bacon sizzling in a pan. And in a children's film no less! Thank you CHARLOTTE'S WEB.

For sheer beauty, you can't beat the shots of Shirley Henderson running on the beach at Morecambe Bay in Juliet McKoen's film FROZEN. The colour palette, the texture of the sand, and all on DV. A real technical and artistic achievement.

Next, proof that even weak movies contain moments of joy, we have Jessica Stevenson's dance routine in Mitchell and Webb's disappointing cinema debut, MAGICIANS. Absolutely bloody hysterical!

The seventh stand-out moment restored my faith in big budget action flicks and Hollywood franchises. It's the tunnel chase scene where McClane crashes a truck into a helicopter in DIE HARD 4.0. It just reminded me how good 80s action flicks really were. And how guiltlessly egregious. Thrills and spills-tastic.

Eighth up, we have Nikki Blonsky's opening number in HAIRSPRAY. It was just so full of energy and fun that you wanted to spend more time with the character and bought into the musical. She's one of 2007's great finds.

Ninth up, I give you two words: Spider Pig. Yes yes, as disappointing as THE SIMPSONS MOVIE was, Spider Pig is now an iconic cinema moment.

Next, we have Richard Gere, who's not someone you'd normally associate with stand-out acting performancs. But in THE HOAX he really got to flex his muscles. There's a scene where he's creating fictitious tapes of himself as author Clifford Irving interviewing Howard Hughes. In reality, he's playing both Irving and Hughes. The impression is superb, but what's more captivating is the fact that Gere can convey how comfortable Irving feels in Hughes' shoes. He's almost better at being Hughes tham himself.

Eleventh, and back to juvenilia, the utter ridiculousness and brazen absurdity of the opening scene of SHOOT 'EM UP. Clive Owen as a pissed off British nanny fighting off gangsters, chomping on a carrot, and still managing to hold the baby. Who needs to be Bond anyways?

Twelfth, a fight scene as homo-erotic and breath-taking as any you've ever seen. Viggo Mortensen in a butt-naked knife fight with some Russian hoods. Once again, David Cronenberg takes us to the edge of voyeurism and exploitation-violence and then calmly walks over that edge. EASTERN PROMISES: flawed movie; iconic fight scene.

Kids flick preview 2: MR MAGORIUM'S WONDER EMPORIUM

MR MAGORIUM'S WONDER EMPORIUM is a beautifully imagined and rendered movie about a magical toyshop and the people who work there. Dustin Hoffman is love-able and wise as the old toy-maker and Natalie Portman is typically charming as his assistant Molly Mahoney. Young Zach Mills is truly impressive as the quirky kid who spends all day playing with toys there. Even Jason Bateman is impressive in an uncharacteristically restrained role as a buttoned-down accountant. But the real star of the show is the Wonder Emporium itself. Its the craziest most fantabulous toy store you could ever imagine, with beautiful magic toys bursting out of every corner and kids actually allowed to play with them!

The problem with the movie is that is rests too heavily on its only theme. Mr Magorium is not long for this world: hence the accountant is brought in to tot up the value of the shop for Mahoney's inheritance. The prevailing theme of this children's theme is, then, death and grieving, and the idea that it is best to honour the lives of those we love by moving on and living our own lives rather than grieving indefinitely. In addition, we need to believe in ourselves. This is all good stuff and the film delivers this adult subject matter sensitively to its target audience. The problem is that there simply isn't enough richness to the character development or genuine suspence to sustain the already slim run-time. It's pretty obvious from the start that Mahoney will find the courage to take on her inheritance and that the accountant's heart will soften, echoing Helm's script for STRANGER THAN FICTION. So, maybe one for DVD...?

MR MAGORIUM'S WONDER EMPORIUM is on release in Brazil, Canada, Taiwan, Turkey, the US, the Philippines, Israel and Poland. It opens next week in Germany, the Netherlands, and on December 13th in Australia, Russia, Singapore, Spain and the UK. It opens later in December in South Korea, Belgium and Hong Kong. I topens in Belgium and Hong Kong at the end of January 2008 and in Norway, Italy, France, Egypt and Japan in February. It opens in Finland in March.

London Film Fest Day 15 - JUNO rocks my world

JUNO is another of those films that you feel wouldn’t have happened before Wes Anderson and Sundance took off and Napoleon Dynamite became a sleeper hit. You know what I mean. The faux-naif acoustic soundtrack featuring Kinks songs and Lou Reed. The quirky characters that say ever-so-slightly unrealistic things about life and love. The over-designed sets, crammed with bad-taste props and trashy clothes. The use of carefully designed credits with a hand-made feel – this time half-animated. The insistent campy visual motifs – in this case Michael Cera’s track-suit and the joggers who run across screen every now and then. I mean, Sweet Tap-Dancing Little Miss Sunshine, it even features a beat-up camper van.

For all that, JUNO remains a very smart, very witty and thoroughly engaging film. That’s largely down to a whip-smart script by new-comer, Diablo Cody, the good comic timing of director Jason Reitman (THANK YOU FOR SMOKING) and flawless dead-pan performances from Ellen Page (HARD CANDY), J K Simmons and Allison Janney. In addition, Michael Cera gives a stealth performance that is so quiet it’s easy to overlook how good he is.

Page plays an intelligent but, yes, fundamentally dumb, 16 year old girl called Juno, who gets knocked up by her best friend Paulie Bleeker (Cera). At first, she thinks she’ll just get a quick abortion but almost on impulse decides to give the baby up for adoption. Her parents (Simmons and Janney) are flummoxed but supportive, and while Juno gets odd looks at school she has enough moxy to front it out. The putative adoptive parents are played by Jason Bateman and Jennifer Garner. Bateman is suitably slippery as the cool older guy. There’s a lot of sexual tension between him and the much younger Page – and I suppose it doesn’t hurt that viewers will partially read Page’s precocious, flirtatious character from HARD CANDY onto her portrayal of Juno. Garner is also fantastic as a slightly snobbish but fundamentally decent yuppie who’s desperate for a kid. She makes what could have been a rather cliché’d annoying character sympathetic. There’s also a hysterical opening cameo from Rainn Wilson as a clerk.

Performances and big belly-laughs aside, the great thing about JUNO is that it’s a proper story with characters that develop and change and events that take us by surprise but also seem plausible and credible. Moreover, instead of letting this become some day-time TV serial cliffhanger about whether the adoption will go ahead, Reitman/Cody rejig the focus to the love story between Cera and Juno. All this adds up to a movie that’s funnier than the already decent THANK YOU FOR SMOKING but which has more narrative drive and a more satisfying emotional pay-off. Instead of drifting in the third act, JUNO actually gets better. And while JUNO doesn’t quite pip SON OF RAMBOW at the post for best comedy at London 2007, it gives it a damn good run for its money.

JUNO played Toronto and London 2007 and goes on release in the US on December 5th. It opens in Australia and Sweden in January 2008, in Finland, Italy, Spain, the UK, Belgium and the Netherlands in February and in Germany in March.

THE EX - piss-poor rom-com fiasco

THE EX (a.k.a. FAST TRACK) is a piss-poor alleged rom-com that was released in the US last Christmas and is now straight to DVD in the UK. The cast - Mia Farrow, Zach Braff, Amanda Peet, Amy Adams, Jason Bateman - have all done good work in their time. This isn't it. I guess you just have to blame the all-time uninspired script from newbies David Guion and Michael Handelman. The "humour" of the piece basically rests on Jason Bateman faking paraplegia and trying to sabotage Zach Braff in his new job. Believe me, the paraplegia humour is nowhere near as sharp and well-done as it was in THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY. Hippie ad agents and a kid who eats hamburgers whole are also apparently the height of wit. Definitely one to avoid.

THE KINGDOM - super-slick, astoundingly subversive

THE KINGDOM is, for the most part, a super-slick CSI Riyadh police procedural. Against bureaucratic opposition, Jamie Foxx leads a team of FBI investigators into a US compound in Saudi Arabia to investigate a terrorist attack perpertrated by Abu Hamza. There is much sifting of debris and extraction of nails from corpses: Jamie Foxx looks pissed off, Jeremy Piven is oleaginous and Jason Bateman wise-cracks. The production is pure quality, as only Hollywood studios know how. It's compelling in the way that CSI used to be compelling, but also totally forgettable. And then, just when you think Jamie and his crew have gone all hearts-and-minds there is a completely subversive final scene which basically says that the American "good guys" that we have been rooting for and the nasty terrorists are just as bad as each other! That it's all about bloody, animalistic, inhumane revenge. I never thought I'd live to say anything that cynical and balls-out subversive in a studio film!

THE KINGDOM is on release in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, Estonia, the Netherlands and Japan. It is released in the Czech Republic, Germany, Israel, Slovakia, Iceland, Norway and Sweden next week. It is released in Egypt, Bulgaria, Mexico, Belgium and France later in October. It goes on release in Greece, Russia, South Korea, Denmark, Slovenia, Turkey, Singapore, Finland, Spain and Italy in November. It is released in Argentina on December 13th.