HOT PURSUIT

HOT PURSUIT is a piss-poor alleged comedy in the vein of the far better MISS CONGENIALITY. It stars the usually likeable Reese Witherspoon as an uptight unfeminine cop who was inspired by her famous cop father but has become a running joke.  Her chance to redeem herself comes when she's asked to escort a mobster's wife (Sofia Vergara) to court to give evidence against the cartel.  The level of humour that we're operating at is the two women pretending to be lesbian lovers and a slack-jawed yokel getting so excited he blows his finger off.  And then there's literally a scene in which Reese Witherspoon first dresses like a boy in a bad wig and then dons a floral headpiece and folk outfit reminiscent of Miss Congeniality. I can't imagine why Reese Witherspoon thought she had the slapstick comedy chops to play this role, but even with a more appropriate lead actress, this is a woeful production.  Anne Fletcher's direction is workmanlike and the script by David Feeney and John Quaintance predictable and uninspiring.)  There is nothing to recommend this film to your attention.

HOT PURSUIT has a running time of 87 minutes and is rated PG-13. The movie is on general release.

THE PROPOSAL - over-styled, under-powered rom-com

Anne Fletcher, of 27 DRESSES and STEP UP fame, delivers a high-concept but low-on-laughs "romantic comedy". The big concept takes a career-bitch (Sandra Bullock) who fakes an engagement to her younger executive assistant (Ryan Reynolds). She wants to get a visa to the US; he wants to be promoted to editor. Over a weekend in Alaska to visit his parents they are meant to fall in love with each other. Problem is, there is zero chemistry between the two. It just looks like a middle-aged woman, with too much Botox and far too over-styled, macking onto a much younger guy. I didn't buy the whole "I'm a tortured rich-kid" dynamic with the guy. I didn't buy the whole "I'm a power-bitch because my parents died" excuse for the woman. And I really didn't buy the wannabe schmaltzy ending. For falling-in-love over a family country-house weekend, check out the far superior in DAN IN REAL LIFE. And for a more credible and affecting immigration set-up, check out the old Andie McDowell/Depardieu classic, GREEN CARD.

THE PROPOSAL is on release in the UK, the US, the Netherlands, Belgium, Australia, Georgia, Hungary, Israel, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, New Zealand, Russia, Lithuania, Mexico, Poland, Turkey, Egypt, Sweden, Greece, Bulgaria, Argentina, Portugal, Ukraine, Brazil, Spain and Estonia. It opens later in July in Iceland and Germany. It opens in August in Malaysia, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Singapore and the Czech Republic. It opens in September in Italy, Hong Kong and France. It opens in Japan on October 16th.

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE - amiable enough, but pulls its punches

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE is a conventional romantic comedy in which a hapless bloke overlooks the small-town girl who will make him happy in his quest to shag a Hollywood star until the mandatory final reel emotional epiphany. Simon Pegg plays the bloke - and is amiable enough even when he's being a total arse. After all, which Joe Everyman wouldn't temporarily loose his head when offered VIP status and It-Girls a-go-go? Megan Fox (TRANSFORMERS) has a thankless role as the aforementioned It Girl and Kirsten Dunst also has a thankless role as the "real girl".

In fact, the script feels altogether under-written, and rather pulls its punches. Underneath all the rom-com guff we're meant to have a stinging indictment of the shallow materialism and corrupt back-scratching of the Hollywood media machine. What we get instead are a few pithy lines from Danny Huston and Gillian Anderson as the journalist and PR woman respectively. But the movie seems to have about as much interest in pushing this critique as Jeff Bridges has in his performance as the magazine editor.

So, all in all, this movie slips down easily enough, but it's pretty thin fair.

HOW TO LOSE FRIENDS AND ALIENATE PEOPLE played, improbably, Cannes 2008, and opened this weekend in the US, UK and Poland. It opens next weekend in Belgium and Russian and opens on October 16th in South Korea and on October 23rd in Australia. It opens in November in Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.

DEATH AT A FUNERAL - monumentally unfunny

DEATH AT A FUNERAL is a British farce blessed with a good director (Frank Oz) and a hansome cast of British actors - from Rupert Graves to Kris Marshall to Daisy Donovan. These are people we KNOW can be funny. Frank Oz is a funny man. Kris Marshall is a funny man. Daisy Donovan had her own comedy show, for heaven's sake. And yet the resulting ninety minute film is monumentally unfunny. I mean, I was sitting in the cinema, bored and unsmiling, thinking how much of an achievement it was to make a film in which Kris Marshall and Daisy Donovan are just NOT funny. Stupendous. Miraculous, even? Certainly, something which suggests a malevolent deliberateness rather than unfortunate cack-handedness. Screen-writer needs to go and stand in the corner and think very carefully about what he's done. This is arguably the worst film I have seen in the year to date.

DEATH AT A FUNERAL was released in Belgium, Israel, Germany, the Netherlands, the USA, Finland, Norway, Italy, Denmark, France, Portugal, Sweden, Singapore, Brazil, Australia, Russia, Spain and Greece earlier this year. It is currently on release in the UK and opens in Hungary on November 22nd.

THE HOAX - Richard Gere in outstanding performance shock!

Who knew?! Richard Gere throws off the facial ticks and smarm that make-up so many of his performances for a genuinely gripping turn as the real-life author and compulsive liar, Clifford Irving. Gere perfectly captures the genius of the failed author who displayed a gift for empathising with reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes and sold a fake autobiography to McGraw-Hill publishing for a cool million bucks. The key is to make the character so charming that you almost want him to succeed but to under-cut his winning nature with a barely acknowledge manipulative streak. Nowhere is this more evident than in Irving's willingness to frame his best friend (played by the ever-brilliant Alfred Molina) as an adulterer.

There's lots to like here apart from Gere's performance. For a start, this really is an important and fascinating true-life story. Hughes knew Irving was faking his autobiography and anonymously sent Irving material incriminating Richard Nixon. What Irving didn't figure out till too late was that Hughes didn't want to bring Nixon down. Rather, he just wanted to scare Nixon into doing his bidding. And Nixon was scared. So scared that he allegedly ordered the Watergate break-in partly to snoop for advanced copies of the book!

Other great things about this pic: the production design and sound-track place us firmly in the late 60s/early 70s and the script-writers are good at making a contemporary audience understand the magnetic pull of the Hughes mythology. The film also boasts a strong supporting cast with Stanley Tucci, Hope Davis and Julie Delpy donning period costumes and Marcia Gay Harden struggling manfully under a bad wig. It all adds up to a high quality, intelligent movie that will appeal to those with an unhealthy interest in how establishment power structures (and bad marriages) really work.

THE HOAX was released earlier this year in the US, the Netherlands, Russia, Iceland, Belgium, France, Turkey, Israel and Portugal. It is currently on release in the UK. It opens in Finland on August 24th and in Brazil and Norway on August 31st 2007.

CASANOVA - gorgeous but neither funny nor particularly romantic

CASANOVA is not a good movie. For a romantic comedy, too much of the comedy relies on physical slapstick and too little on verbal wit. There are no laugh-out-lines and some of the players are horribly mis-cast. Jeremy Irons, who plays the Catholic inquisitor, and so should have some of the best comic lines about the Catholic Church, simply cannot play comedy. The romance is there, but there is little chemistry between Heath Ledger and Sienna Miller, playing Casanova and Francesca Bruni respectively. For real romance, we must look to the marvellous and beautiful actress Lena Olin, who plays Francesca's mum - and of all people, Oliver Platt! Although Platt is cast as the fat lard-merchant that Francesca may be forced to marry, by the end of the movie, he is the closest thing we have to a romantic hero! And for real laughs, Omid Djalili steals the show. On a technical level, the faults are less obvious, but those with a sensitivity to these things will notice some ropey special effects when Casanova escapes over the roof-tops of Venice and later when he takes off in a hot air balloon. The foreground action has been "cut and pasted" onto a background and we can see the lines!

Having said all this, there are some good things in this movie which save it from being tossed into the trash-can of romantic-comedies, alongside Just Like Heaven and Bewitched. For a start, it looks gorgeous. Never has Venice looked so beautiful, so decadent, so scrumptious. Exterior shots have majesty, intererior shots are breathtaking, costumes are lavish. Still, visual flair is not enough and I found myself looking at my watch rather often during this flick. Worse still, I found myself comparing it to the infinitely better recent BBC adaptation - a common theme for today's reviews. The BBC had a fraction of the cash but produced a film of double the beauty, four times the comedy, and eight times the intelligence. So, if you want to see David Tennant and Peter O-Toole share the honours as Casanova, click here. And if you want to see a good romantic comedy, go rent THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN instead.

CASANOVA premiered at Venice 2005 and is already on release in the US, Austria and, as of yesterday, in the UK.