BOOK CLUB

Bill Holderman's directorial debut and Erin Simms screenwriting debut comprises a rather gentle but pleasant rom-com aimed at the sixty-something market.   The conceit is that four long-time friends have a regular bookclub, and reading Fifty Shades of Grey re-awakens their interest in sex, dating and love.  Diane Keaton plays a people-pleasing grandma being bullied by her patronising kids into moving closer to them and away from her friends, not to mention a potential new love interest played by the still hot Andy Garcia.  Mary Steenburgen plays a married woman desperate to re-inject some sex into her otherwise happy marriage.  Candice Bergen takes the leap into online dating despite the knock to her self-esteem from her ex's twenty-something new fiancee. And Jane Fonda plays a successful businesswoman who finally allows herself to admit that she needs love in the form of Don Johnson.

It turns out that the issues plaguing sixty-something women are not that different from those affecting their younger counterparts - the inability to be vulnerable, balancing work and relationships, getting over an ex, getting over low self-esteem. As a result this movie was actually more relatable than I'd thought.  Moreover, from what I've seen from friends parents, their is an alarming tendency to co-opt one's parents lives and assume that they have nothing going on - and a need for the grandparents to reclaim their independence. 

The downside is that it also turns out that a sixty-something rom-com has also the same genre cliches as a twenty-something one - the meet cutes, the final act reconciliations.  But I feel that if you take this film for what it is, you'll enjoy the ride. 

BOOK CLUB has a running time of 104 minutes and is rated PG-13.

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE MORGANS? is okay shock

Maybe I'm just in an unreasonably happy holiday mood, or maybe my expectations had been lowered by the generally pisspoor reviews, but I rather enjoyed DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE MORGANS? It's the latest romantic comedy from writer-director Marc Lawrence, the man behind the phenomenally successful MISS CONGENIALITY and 2007's rather charming MUSIC AND LYRICS, also starring Hugh Grant. In DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE MORGANS? Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker play two successful New Yorkers on the verge of divorce but forced into the witness protection programme together.

This is a rather ludicrous premise on which to hang a relationship drama, but perfectly in step with typically farcial rom-com set-ups (see THE PROPOSAL or FAILURE TO LAUNCH). And, as you can imagine, there are plenty of set pieces where the effete liberal New Yorkers come up against the cruder delights of country living. Naturally, there is a third act crisis which prompts a happy ending. There's plenty to object to here. The laziness of the derivative plot, for one. The reductive politics in which city dwellers are cynical ne'er-do-wells and country dwellers are the keepers of Real American Values, is another.

But hidden underneath all these lazy genre tropes is a rather engaging romantic drama in which two mature people talk through issues from real life - the way in which difficulty conceiving can put a relationship under pressure. I found myself actually routing for Sarah Jessica Parker and Hugh Grant. Moreover, many of Hugh Grant's lines are genuinely witty.

So, whatever the rest of the reviewers say, I had a good time with this film. Underneath all that predictable attempted screw-ball slapstick lies a rather sweet relationship drama.

DID YOU HEAR ABOUT THE MORGANS? is on release in the US, UK, Australia, France and Thailand. It opens next weekend in Argentina, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Portugal, Singapore, Switzerland, Austria, Spain and Sweden. It opens on January 20th in Egypt; on January 27th in Belgium, South Korea and Norway. It opens on February 5th in Brazil, Estonia and Finland; on February 11th in the Netherlands, Slovenia and Venezuela; on February 18th in Russia; on February 26th in Italy and Romania. It opens on March 5th in Poland and on March 12th in Japan.

FOUR CHRISTMASES - er..."mistletoe"?

FOUR CHRISTMASES is a piss-poor generic holiday season comedy starring Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon. I normally like Vaughn's motor-mouth humour and Reese Witherspoon was great in LEGALLY BLONDE but they struggle to keep this underwritten movie afloat. The jokes are too thin and too few - the "big message" too preachy and obvious - the whole enterprise such a blatant shake-down it made me ashamed to have colluded with it. The high concept is that Vaughn and Witherspoon think that they are a happy independent couple until they are guilted into visiting each of their parents one Christmas day. Naturally, the movie spends eighty minutes showing how "they fuck you up your mum and dad" before telling us that, actually, we should all be nice to our families, before then telling us, hey, it's okay to exclude them from major life events. Huh?

So this movie is crass and inconsistent. It's also poorly made - just look for those awful continuity errors with Witherspoon's wig. Frankly, the only mildly interesting thing in the whole flick was the Steve Wiebe cameo. Seriously, director Seth Gordon should go back to making docs than hiring himself out.

FOUR CHRISTMASES is on release in the US, UK, Canada, Singapore, the Philippines, Australia, Germany, Portugal, Russia and Iceland. It opens next weekend in the Czech Republic, Greece, Hong Kong and Poland. It opens on December 18th in Argentina, Croatia, Hungary, the Netherlands, Bulgaria and Estonia. It opens on Christmas day in Belgium and Brazil and on New Year's Eve in France.

STEP BROTHERS - Will Ferrell needs to get a new act

Who coulda guessed?

Judd Apatow makes a film about a middle-aged man who's still acting like an adolescent.

Will Ferrell stars in a film as an annoying man-child, oblivious to normal adult etiquette, making everyone's life miserable until he goes through a third act montage.

Bina shells out ten squid plus jelly babies and comes away with a few chuckles at best.

The plot of this, the latest, Will Ferrell vehicle, is contrived. (The shock). Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins play two sixty-somethings who marry, uniting their respective kids (Ferrell and Reilly) as forty-something step-brothers. Both kids are irritating man-children who need to get off their fat asses and get jobs. The step-father sticks to a tough-love policy, alienating the step-mother, forcing the family to a crisis point. Eventually the kids do accept some kind of responsbility and start shaping up, until the harsh father gimps out and admits that he prefers his kids unique.

I hated this movie. It's crass, lazily-acted and poorly-scripted. Will Ferrell needs to do more than just turn up, screw up his face and whine. However, it could just be that I have tired of Ferrell's one-note comedic stylings and John C Reilly's Ferrell knock-off performances.

To sum up: your enjoyment of this film will be greater the fewer Will Ferrell movies you have seen.

STEP BROTHERS is on release in Canada, the US and UK. It goes on release in September in Iceland, Germany, Singapore, Estonia, Venezuela, Australia, Brazil, Russia and Finland. It opens in October in France, Sweden, Argentina, Greece, Norway, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, Turkey and Denmark.

NUMB - crass

Despite starring Matthew Perry of FRIENDS fame, NUMB went straight to DVD in the US and went on extremely limited release in the UK. Potential distributors had correctly surmised that the movie fell uneasily between two stalls: neither a charming romantic comedy nor a serious treatment of depersonalisation disorder.

Perry stars as a Hollywood screen-writer who has a mental disorder wherein he perceives life as at one step removed from himself. This is a genuine mental disorder and has, as yet, no means of treatment. As the movie progresses we see Perry bounce from psychologist to psychologist as different mixes of therapy and pharmaceuticals fail to give him any relief.

This could have been the basis of an insightful and moving drama of a man struggling to function in the face of illness. But instead, in a shamefully crass move, the film-makers decide to make the mental illness a mere conceit upon which to hang a romantic-comedy between Perry's character and Lynn Collins' green-light girl. As romances go, this feels cliched and unreal thanks to one of those typical declarations at an airport and a rather schmaltzy speech in a video store.

NUMB went straight to DVD in the US and was released in a handful of screens in the UK in June 2008. It is available on DVD.

HONEYDRIPPER - a finely balanced, wonderful picture

So here we are again. Danny Glover playing an old man, Tyrone Purvis, trying to keep his business despite financial strife and seemingly unstoppable change. In BE KIND REWIND it was the change from gonzo VHS to DVD. In HONEYDRIPPER, it's the change from acoustic blues to electric rock.

HONEYDRIPPER is the name of Tyrone's club on the outskirts of an Alabama town called Harmony. It's 1950. People of colour are still under the yoke of the white man - terrorised by the local Sherriff and hired into cotton-picking by the local judge. Radical evangelicals demand conversion to righteousness and the ruthless sloughing off of sinful, unrepentant family members. Tyrone's bar, featuring an outstanding old blues singer is losing business to a rival club that has a jukebox and Hot Jazz.

As with all John Sayles' movies, HONEYDRIPPER balances a credible, emotionally affecting character-led story with social and political insight. The recreation of a time, not lo song ago, when racism was tangible and endemic is frightening and saddening. But Sayles is careful to never let it swamp the emotional heart of the story. That is Tyrone's struggle to keep his bar without alienating his wife Delilah. Tyrone crosses many a line to raise the cash he needs and it's tribute to Glover's performance that even when he's doing these pretty morally questionable things, we always believe he's basically a good guy and we always want him to succeed. But the real stand-out performance in a movie with a strong ensemble cast is that of Lisa Gay Hamilton as Delilah. She's a good strong woman and she's no fool. She recognises the strength and the flaws in Tyrone. Similarly, while she wants to be part of a Church she can see through the hysteria of the local evangelicals. Sayles has written a fully rounded character, and Hamilton has brought her to life wonderfully. Other notable performances include newcomer Yaya DaCosta as Delilah's daughter ChinaDoll and Mary Steenburgen as the well-meaning but ultimately clueless Amanda.

HONEYDRIPPER is in some ways Sayles' most finely balanced film - combining a fascinating story with devestating social critique. The script, performances, production values are all top-notch. It's one of those movies where you feel that you are watching a complete final product - that the director has a completeness of vision. The added bonus - or rather - the glue that holds the whole thing together is the sound-track. Even if the film were no good, it would be worth watching just for the music. Mason Daring corals a number of great blues, gospel and rock musicians for some live numbers that blow you away.

HONEYDRIPPER played Toronto and London 2007 and was released in the US in DEcember 2007. It goes on release in the UK on April 25th.