PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN

PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN is the stunning debut feature from actor-writer-director Emerald Fennell. It's the darkest of dark comedy thrillers that impresses with how it manages to handle the nastiest of subject matter, to genuinely thrill, move and entertain. To direct something that manages such swift changes in tone and mood, but never felt jarring or out of control, is a skill and feat that has beaten many more seasoned directors. I simply cannot wait to see what Fennell does next, whether reprising her role as Camilla Parker-Bowles in the THE CROWN or creating her next movie.

The film casts Carey Mulligan against type (see review for the awful THE DIG) as a very smart but deeply damaged thirty year old woman who seeks revenge on the cohort of "nice guys" who think nothing of taking drunk girls home from bars and raping them. To do so, Cassie goes to bars, pretends to be drunk, waits for the inevitable to happen and then shocks her victims with her stone cold sober retribution.  Just what the nature of that retribution is, and the reason for Cassie's rage, are withheld for the first half of the film, creating a brilliantly intriguing and disturbing tension.  This is especially acute when Cassie's revenge moves beyond men to the women who have internalised misogyny and slut-shaming and enable the crimes to go hidden and covered up and the institutions (universities, psychiatry) that further victimise women. I genuinely gasped when Cassie involved the daughter of one of her targets in her deceptions and the idea that our hero-protagonist might actually be more evil than her targets was a nasty but brilliant tease.

What really impresses is how credible all of this is - from Cassie's trauma to the arse-covering excuses given to her by all involved (not least a great performance from Alison Brie as the most smug of middle class mothers who has a come to jesus moment). I really felt for these characters - not just Cassie, but even people like Alfred Molina's guilt-ridden psychiatrist. It's really testament to Emerald Fennell's direction that the film moves you even as it uses garish almost cartoonish visuals and music. I loved the chintzy overbearing interiors of Cassie's childhood home and the pop-coloured coffee shop run by her wonderfully sympathetic boss (Laverne Cox). I also loved the visual imagery that often sees Cassie depicted with angelic wings even as she does pretty nasty things. And the fact that the script is willing to go to an ending that is fittingly dark.  

Honestly, I cannot think of a single thing I didn't like about this film. Like it's heroine, it's smart and dark and thrilling, and it speaks to issues that need urgent attention. Kudos to all involved. 

YOUNG WOMAN has a rating of R and a running time of 113 minutes. The film played Sundance 2020 and was released on streaming services in January 2021.

ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY

This  movie is a workmanlike and mildly entertaining adaptation of the children's book by Judith Viorst.  It's got a high concept not unlike the Jim Carrey vehicle LIAR LIAR, in which a put upon schoolboy wishes the rest of his family would understand his pain, and so wishes them a terrible day. The next day, of course, happens to be one of a critical work task for his mother, a job interview for his father, his brother's junior prom and his sister's high school musical.  Naturally all these things go belly up, but being a heart-warming tale of family, they emerge from it more appreciative of each other than ever.  Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner play the parents and let's face it, it's hard to think of two more likeable and harmless actors in contemporary cinema. They imbue the film with good intentions and the rest of the film just trails in their wake.  I found the whole thing unutterably dull, and given how clever modern animated movies are at keeping all ranges entertained, this is a real problem. That said, I am sure the kiddies will relate, even if there is no real message to the film.

ALEXANDER AND THE TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO GOOD, VERY BAD DAY has a running time of 81 minutes and is rated PG. The movie was released earlier this month in Argentina, Aruba, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Israel, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Mexico, Russia, Canada, Estonia, Romania, the USA, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines and Latvia.  It is released this weekend in Trinidad and Tobago, Brazil, Chile, Hong Kong, Uruguay, the UK, Ireland and Lithuania. It will be released in Greece, Peru Paraguay, and South Africa on October 30th; in Portugal, Spain, Poland and Turkey on November 7th; in Taiwan on November 14th; in Norway on November 21st; in Australia, Denmark, Malaysia, New Zealand,  and Singapore on December 4th, and in Germany on April 9th 2015. 

IGOR - bizarrely pitched

IGOR is a kids animated film that subverts the Frankenstein legend. Igor is a humble hunchback who dreams of breaking through the class ceiling and becoming a bona fide Evil Scientist. To do this, he creates a monster that he'll enter in the annual Evil Science Fair (!) But Igor has three problems. First, his monster isn't an mass-murderer but an aspiring actress, who just wants to sing songs of joy and hope. Second, he's not actually that evil. In fact, he's a sweetie and he's falling for his monster. Third, evil Dr Schadenfreude wants to steal Igor's monster and win the science fair himself.

The movie is quite bizarre. I'm not sure how young kids are going to react to a movie populated with patchwork beasties rather than cute bunnies. Or a movie where the humour is aimed far more at adults than kids - knowing pop-culture references rather than prat-falls. And IGOR isn't even going for the sort of adult humour that drives a movie like SHREK. Rather, it's going for the sort of arrested development geeks (myself included) that love watching movies like BRAIN DEAD or YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN or Tim Burton's animation. To that end, while I had a nice time watching IGOR I'm not sure if it really works as a kids flick. But if you like John Cusack and Steve Buscemi and loved the combination of ghouls and Harry Belafonte in BEETLEJUICE, this movie could be for you.

IGOR is currently on release in the USA, Israel, Taiwan, the Philippines, Greece and the UK. It opens in Iceland on October 31st. It opens in December in Russia, France and Portugal and in Argentina on January 1st.

EPIC MOVIE - the 38th worst movie of all time

I considered writing a one word review of EPIC MOVIE. It would read "WANK". That, I felt, would sum up how much effort the writer-directors Jason Friedberg & Aaron Seltzer, and the cast, notably Kal Penn and Jennifer Coolidge (both of whom should know better) had put into the movie.

Heck, it's not even a spoof of EPIC films! Half of the time it's pastiching films like NACHO LIBRE or CHARLIE AND THE CHOOCOLATE FACTORY which are in no way epic. And we're lucky if it even sticks to movies - the other half of the time it's making lame-ass references to MTV Cribs and the like. At one point, it rips off SNAKES ON A PLANE, which is itself a pastiche. Seriously. EPIC MOVIE isn't even cinema. It has no discernable narrative arc, no character development and barely a phrase of sentient dialogue.

Indeed, the movie is only noteworthy because it is another in a long franchise that manages to score well at the box office despite the intellectual and emotional vacuity of the product. I assume that the people who watch these films are the same cohort that smoke cigarettes - how else can you explain people who willingly hand over hard-earned money to watch something so poisonous and patronising? (I got a free ticket because the cinema had earlier messed up an internet booking. It proved to be the cinematic equivalent of free drugs from your friendly local dope-peddler. They give away the shit for free because no-one would willingly get involved in such a racket.)

EPIC MOVIE is on release in Australia, the US, Ireland, Latvia and the UK. It opens in Singapore and Philippines later this month and in Argentina, Spain, Iceland, Russia, Estonia, Belgium, Finland and Sweden in March. It opens in Germany and the Netherlands and Italy in April. It opens in France in May.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION - sadly, rather disappointing

I realise that it's more than a little perverse to praise a mainstream, unimaginative rom-com like MUSIC AND LYRICS and then to pan a Christopher Guest movie in the same week. After all, Christopher Guest is a comic genius. He co-wrote and starred in THIS IS SPINAL TAP and more recently brought us the wickedly well-observed improvised mockumentaries BEST IN SHOW and A MIGHTY WIND. So, I approached his latest effort, spoofing a low-budget movie production that suddenly gets a whiff of an Oscar, with high expectations.

The resulting film is, however, sadly disappointing. Something about the scenario or the characters just didn't take. Perhaps it's because Hollywood is too obvious a target. No-one had made a film about dog shows, let alone used it as a hook on which to skewer the insecurities of humanity. But Hollywood has been done - not least by David Mamet in the outstanding STATE AND MAIN. Maybe, Guest just missed a trick in the characterisations he handed his key players. In particular, I thought Jennifer Coolidge was wasted - criminally hemmed in by her part as a dim-witted movie producer. But a lot of the time, the results yielded by the improvisation just didn't have the necessary quotient of witty one-liners. Ricky Gervais was very ordinary as a mercenary studio executive, and the Siskel and Ebert spoof fell flat too.

Still, Christopher Guest on bad form is still light years ahead of most of the alleged comedy filling the multiplex and there are a couple of scenes in FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION that had me guffawing in an embarassingly conspicuous manner. The stand-out actors are John Michael Higgins, who plays a PR agent called Corey Taft and Fred Willard who plays an ageing, wannabe hipster entertainment reporter. Willard really is Pure Comedy Gold in this flick.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION played Toronto and London 2006. It was released in the US last November, in Australia in January and in the UK on Friday. It is released on Region 1 DVD on February 20th.

DATE MOVIE - I repeat, what were you thinking?!

Back in February 2006 I shook an angry fist at the viewing public for pushing the god-awful spoof flick DATE MOVIE to the top of the UK Box Office charts. I didn't even review the movie - i just wanted to bury the traumatic experience deep within my subconscious. The whole torrid mess was brought to my attention, however, when Doctor007 rented the movie last night. Now, I appreciate that picking a date movie for a chick who watches a lot of movies anyway will present certain problems for your average guy. And, being a Man of Science, Doctor007 is a pretty literal-minded person - hence the choice of DATE MOVIE. But dear Lord, just how was I gonna break it to him?

In fairness, I approached the screening with an open-mind, not wanting to hurt the Good Doctor's feelings. I submerged my horror at finding that the DVD had a FREAKIN' LAUGH TRACK! I mean, Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ, a movie has to be pretty sucky for the frickin' production team to give you the option of artifically adding a laugh track to substitute for your own deathly silence. (Actually, it wouldn't be silence but the deathly gnawing sound of me hacking through my own neck with a blunt cheese knife.) And then I noticed that the DVD had an alternative commentary given by two movie critics. This seemed pretty perverse. After all, the DATE MOVIE studio had stopped critics seeing the movie before it opened precisely to stymie bad press. You've got to love the chutzpah of the marketing man who actively promotes the suckiness of a DVD by inviting the critics to throw brickbats at the screen. It's almost like the studio is trying to say that DATE MOVIE is so bad, it's good.

It's a scoundrelous move, no doubt. But the admirably weasle-like nature of the plan cannot alter the fact that DATE MOVIE is so bad, it's just bad. And when I say "bad" what I really mean is "a blight upon the landscape and perhaps definitive proof that evil exists in the world." The attempt of the studio to co-opt the opposition is particularly telling because it goes to the heart of why the movie sucked so badly.....

DATE MOVIE sucks primarily because it is too soft on its targets. All good spoofs should have some bite (preferably into the gelatinous ass of studio hackery). But DATE MOVIE clearly has a warm-hearted appreciation of the genre it is supposed to be excoriating. So we get a series of scenes that vaguely resemble the source material - but a bit more exaggerated - and that alone is meant to be funny. Well, boys, here's a newsflash, you need more than brand recognition to raise a laugh out of me. If you want to see a good spoof, just check out BAD SANTA - that sends up Christmas and family movies with a vengeance that borders on psychotic. Awesome.

The second reason DATE MOVIE sucks is because it is spoofing a genre that is already meant to be funny. (Although, people who were subjected to FAILURE TO LAUNCH may disagree.) Most of the time, watching scenes in DATE MOVIE just reminded me how much more fun I had watching genuine comedies, such as NAPOLEON DYNAMITE or WHEN HARRY MET SALLY. Successful spoofs such as the AIRPLANE films, or even the first SCARY MOVIE, are funny because they mock genres which take themselves seriously. Rom-coms are of their nature fluffy pieces of disposable pop culture. Spoofing a rom-com is like taking something that is already ADD and breaking it down into even smaller chunks - a complete waste of time.

Of course, the final and fatuous thing to say about DATE MOVIE is that it just isn't funny. This is a subjective thing, and as I said in my February post, it did well at the box office so maybe I am way off track here. But still, I didn't laugh once, and that is something of a first, considering the movie stars comedy greats from Eddie Griffin to Fred Willard to Jennifer Coolidge. My only conclusion is that writer/director Aaron Seltzer is a numskull and should be hung, drawn and quartered for crimes against cinema.

Is there anything good that I can say about this steaming heap of horse manure? Well, hard as it is to believe, it could be worse. Doctor007 could have hired DEUCE BIGALOW: EUROPEAN GIGOLO* instead... So, he is on reprieve for now, but another mis-step and it could soon be the end of a beautiful relationship...

DATE MOVIE was released globally from February 2006. It is now available on Region 1 and Region 2 DVD, but seriously, you would get more value for money entertainment by feeding your hard-earned cash a quarter at a time into a skee-ball machine. *The DVD not the hooker.

AMERICAN DREAMZ - More hit than miss, but still not brilliant

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