SHE'S FUNNY THAT WAY

The celebrated Hollywood director and raconteur Peter Bogdanovich returns to our screens after a 17 year hiatus with a romantic comedy that one can only generously describe as "inspired by" Woody Allen romantic comedies. It's set in New York. The opening credits feature an easy listening track from the 1950s.  The lead character is a young prostitute with a heart of gold and a over-egged Noo Yoick accent in the manner of Mira Sorvino.  She's forms a relationship with a much older successful married man.  People have irritable but witty conversations on side-walks and disparage the irritatingly perfect weather in Los Angeles. Psychoanalysis features. There's even a wise-ass voice-over and a knowing love of Hollywood convention.

Does this blatant channelling of Woody Allen make SHE'S FUNNY THAT WAY a bad film?  No. It's not a bad film. It's a fairly dull film - contrived in its chamber comedy set-up - often mis-firing in its humour.  It goes a little something like this.

INHERENT VICE

You can listen to a podcast review of this film below, or subscribe to Bina007 Movie Reviews in iTunes.



I am super excited to talk to you about INHERENT VICE, the new movie from Paul Thomas Anderson and the first time a Thomas Pynchon novel has been filmed, because they're these complex genre-defying novels that talk about everything and nothing and are kind of unfilmable. The resulting film is one of the weirdest, bizarrest films of the year, and I can quite see why you would be totally weirded out by it. But to me this film is the bastard love child of Lebowski and LA Confidential with a strange warm fuzzy heart.  It may not be as austere and brilliant as THERE WILL BE BLOOD or THE MASTER but is it's own crazy beautiful mess and well worth watching.

So what is the film about? It's a kind of film noir, with all the strangeness that goes along with that genre. It has a mood of craziness, corruption and seediness.  There are rich men, damsels in distress, a maze of plot and you never quite know if you're going to make it out in one piece.  Sometimes you don't know if the author or the director have a clue what's going on, and then the film just sort of ends. That's a little bit the case with INHERENT VICE. The first hour has momentum and drive and hilarity, and then it kind of drifts, but I think that's intentional. And then it goes dark and subversive and there's a very weird sex scene, and then it finishes up in a warm and happy place, sort of....

THE INTERNSHIP

Here's my ten minute movie review of the new summer comedy from director Shawn Levy (NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM) and stars Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn. It would be easy to be cynical about the laziness of reuniting the stars of THE WEDDING CRASHERS as essentially the same wise-cracking characters in a narrative that bears no small resemblance to DODGEBALL: A TRUE UNDERDOG STORY.  But I have to say that I was entirely won over by this loveable, touching, laugh-out-loud funny and actually pretty intelligent movie. Also, it's not all old-hat - newcomer Max Minghella totally steals the show as the obligatory douchebag.

THE INTERNSHIP has a rating of PG-13 in the USA and a running time of 119 minutes.

THE INTERNSHIP is on release in the USA, Australia, Bahrain, Hungary, Lebanon, New Zealand, Portugal, Bulgaria, Estonia, Lithuania, Serbia, Russia, Colombia, Poland and Sweden. It opens this weekend in Belgium, Egypt, France, Bosnia, Croatia, Greece, Israel, Macedonia, Slovenia, Romania, Spain and Taiwan. It opens in the UK, Ireland and Norway on July 3rd; in Denmark, the Dominican Republic, the Netherlands, Finland and Turkey on July 12th; on August 2nd in Mexico and Ecuador; on August 9th in Bolivia and Uruguay; on August 22nd in Argentina, Singapore and Venezuela; on August 29th in Peru and Brazil; in Germany on September 19th; and in Chile and Italy on September 26th.

iPad Round-Up 1 - THE BIG YEAR

THE BIG YEAR is a charming, gentle comedy about the importance of family and following your dreams.  Jack Black stars as a guy in a dead-end job who has a passion for bird-watching, and defies his father's incredulity to do "the big year" - a challenge in which US birdwatchers compete to see the most species.  He's competing against Steve Martin's successful executive, who's about to retire and spend time with his loving family.  And both the Steve Martin and Jack Black character strike up a friendship in opposition to their common enemy - Owen Wilson's slick, hyper-competitive, incumbent title-holder - a man who has sacrificed his marriage to his obsession.

There are no big revelations in terms of the performance.  Jack Black plays his typical loveable loser character.  Steve Martin plays his typical loveable cool dad character.  Owen Wilson plays his typical loveable rogue.  The direction (David Frankel - MARLEY & ME) is workmanlike and the script (Howard Franklin - ANTITRUST) is efficient.  But the movie had a genuinely warm tone to it, it successfully conveyed the madness and the beauty of birdwatching, against all odds, and I had a good time with it.

THE BIG YEAR was released in Canada, the US, Ireland and the UK in 2011 and earlier this year in Malta, Australia, Portugal, Lithuania and Romania. It opens in Germany on June 14th and in France on September 19th. It is available to rent and own. 

HOW DO YOU KNOW

HOW DO YOU KNOW is a truly execrable relationship drama that was, for some reason, marketed as a light-hearted romantic comedy. Reese Witherspoon plays a pro soft-ball player cut from the national team as she turns thirty - a move that sends her into a life crisis.  She simply doesn't know whether she wants to be a normal girl with a boyfriend and eventually a baby, let alone who she wants to be with. The choices are Owen Wilson's wealthy but promiscuous pro sportsman and Paul Rudd's earnest but hapless failed businessmen. Hardly a great set of options.  Cue lots of sex with the pro sportsmen, lots of wannabe quirky-cute conversations with the failed businessmen, and a lot of really really boring scenes in which unlikeable narcissists ruminate on how shitty their lives are, all the time in perfectly designed rooms with perfectly quaffed hair.  Witherspoon is mawkish; Rudd is mawkish; and Wilson plays that charming rogue character he always plays.  But no-one is more ill-used than Jack Nicholson.  Where's the emotional insight and wry wit of James L Brooks' AS GOOD AS IT GETS?  Where's the real heart of James L Brooks' THE SIMPSONS.  Poor, poor, poor.

HOW DO YOU KNOW is on release in the US, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Egypt, France, Ireland, Spain and the UK. It opens in February in Estonia, Australia, Kazakhstan, Peru, Russia, Bulgaria, Japan, the Netherlands, Italy, Argentina, Hungary, Israel, Iceland and Lithuania. It opens in March in Belgium, Kuwait, Malaysia, Portugal, Singapore, the Philippines, Poland and Norway. It opens on April 29th in Brazil.

Wes Anderson's THE FANTASTIC MR FOX to open London 2009

After the genius of BOTTLE ROCKET and THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS and the self-indulgent fiascos of THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU and THE DARJEELING LIMITED, all eyes are on Wes Anderson's next project, an animated adaptation of the Roald Dahl classic, THE FANTASTIC MR FOX. Set for release in the UK on October 23rd and in the US on November 13th, the movie will open the London Film Festival this year. Let's hope it can break the hoo-doo of recent open films which have all been picked on commercial rather than critical grounds - mediocre, solid but that's all. I give you films such as THE CONSTANT GARDENER, FROST/NIXON and oh, that awful biopic, SYLVIA. So far, things look good. We have a voice cast stuffed with Anderson regulars - Owen Wilson, Angelica Huston - but we also have top notch British characters - Michael Gambon, Helen McCrory - not to mention genuine Hollywood A-list in Meryl Streep (stepping in for Cate Blanchett as Mrs Fox). I also love that Anderson has gone back to old school stop motion animation. Sounds, if not fantastic, given his recent record, at least intriguing....

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM 2 - Last night I dreamed that somebody loved me

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM was a sweet kids adventure film featuring Ben Stiller as a dead-beat dad security guard who bonds with his kid when the exhibits in the New York Natural History Museum come alive. Whatever charm the movie had, resided in Stiller's character Larry finding courage and friendship with the miniature cowboys, a statue of Teddy Roosevelt and a big articulated dinosaur. I also loved the fact that the exhibits were basically rubbish. They were exactly the kind of low rent exhibits you can find in many a dusty old museum filled with diaramas and stuffed heads.

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM 2 is a fundamentally different beast. Propelled by the box office success of the first installment, the movie has a bigger budget, better special effects and an even more star-filled cast. There is a certain fun in seeing the Lincoln memorial spring to life, but I couldn't help feeling, in the words of Emperor Joseph II, that they were simply too many notes. "My dear young man, don't take it too hard. Your work is ingenious. It's quality work. And there are simply too many notes, that's all. Just cut a few and it will be perfect." 

Added to the mish-mash of historical figures, we also get a less interesting protagonist. The security guard has, in the intervening year, become a millionaire inventor of such crappy household objects as glow-in-the-dark torches. The message of the movie seems to be that being rich doesn't make you happy. Still, the soul-searching and character development isn't given much screen-time, and serves only to allow Larry to become such a large benefactor of the museum that he can keep his friends safe.

Despite the lack of compelling plot and over-stuffed character roster, NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM 2 isn't a complete waste of time. And that's because of three people. First, Jonah Hill has a pretty funny five minute cameo as a security guard at the Smithsonian who is full of his own petty power. Second, Steve Coogan is also good value, and reprises his role as Octavius, the miniature Roman general. Third, and best of all, Hank Azaria plays the baddie - an Egyptian Pharoah hell-bent on ruling the world - as a classic Die Hard Jeremy Irons baddie. It's pure comedy gold. This is him diss'ing Darth Vader:

"Is that you breathing? Because I can't hear myself think! There's too much going on here; you're asthmatic, you're a robot. And why the cape? Are we going to the opera? I don't think so." 

Genius. And, of course, Amy Adams is charming as Larry's love interest, Amelia Earheart.

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM: BATTLE OF THE SMITHSONIAN is on global release.

Why does DRILLBIT TAYLOR exist?

Back in the 80s, John Hughes made a string of films that were brilliantly funny, tightly structured and perfectly articulated the anxiety of growing up in suburban America. His best movies - THE BREAKFAST CLUB; SIXTEEN CANDLES - didn't rely on the improbable plot devices. But even movies like WEIRD SCIENCE were firmly nailed to the ground with their honest depiction of adolescent sexual frustration. It was refreshing to see life from the point of view of the ordinary people - the anonymous mass rather than the pretty cheerleaders.

Since then, teen comedies have become a much impoverished genre - alternating between gross out spoofs for the guys and air-brushed love-stories for the girls. As for John Hughes, he became enmeshed in the depressingly mediocre HOME ALONE and BEETHOVEN franchises.

With THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN and KNOCKED UP, it looked like Judd Apatow might have inherited Hughes' ability to chronicle our anxieties with a healthy whollop of self-deprecating wit. These movies appealed to the generation reared on Hughes, now dealing with the transition from college grad to responsible adult.

No doubt Apatow and his frequent collaborator Seth Rogen are cresting a wave. The question is whether they are spreading themselves too thin and letting the quality of their projects suffer.

DRILLBIT TAYLOR is a case in point. Even roping in the legendary Hughes hasn't produced a tightly-plotted, consistently funny script. In fact, this film feels hastily assembled and overly-reliant on Owen Wilson's goofy smile. The plot is simple. Three geeks (Hughes-a-go-go!) hire a bodyguard (Wilson) to pose as a teacher and protect them from the school bully. But the bodyguard is really just a homeless scam-artist looking for a quick buck until his heart-of-gold (and bogus friends) get in the way.

There's no coming-of-age; no biting satire; no real jokes. Wilson is sweet; the geeks are sweet; everyone's rather lovely and it all ends well. The final point is this: DRILLBIT TAYLOR is not a bad film but it IS a deeply lazy, forgettable and mediocre film. Why does it need to exist at all?

DRILLBIT TAYLOR is currently on release in Australia, Canada, Mexico, the US, Belgium, Estonia and the UK. It opens in April in Russia, Argentina, Turkey, Iceland and Sweden. It opens in May in France, Denmark, Germany, Singapore and Spain. It opens in June in Finland, Norway and the Netherlands.

THE DARJEELING LIMITED should take its own advice

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself. It's highly unattractive."

I was non-plussed by THE DARJEELING LIMITED when I watched it at the London Film Festival. Because I had previously enjoyed many of Wes Anderson's films, I thought maybe my non-reaction was due to cinematic overload in the preceeding fortnight. So I decided to give the flick another shot after a suitably relaxing Thansgiving break had put me into a more receptive mood. Sadly, even after a second viewing, I have to report that Wes Anderson is, to my mind, a director offering diminishing returns.

His new movie, THE DARJEELING LIMITED, treads familiar ground. So much so that THE ONION spoofed his style brilliantly last month. The production design consists of interiors over-stuffed with meaningful objets and the characters wear tailor-made suits and carry bespoke luggage. We are in the ranks of the over-privileged and self-indulgent. The camera draws attention to itself by switching between static symmetric framing; sudden changes of focus; and the jarring use of slo-mo (usually to a vintage Kinks sound-track.) There is an absent father figure and a beloved but somehow distant mother. There are siblings who are struggling to deal with each other and their parents. There is a troubled boy, played by a Wilson brother, who attempts suicide.

In previous, better films, Wes Anderson used this set-up to create characters that were memorable and love-able. He brilliantly articulated the dynamics of family relationships but also provided light relief throught witty banter and improbable situations. His movies have always looked deliberately designed but pre LIFE AQUATIC, they also had heart.

THE DARJEELING LIMITED is, by contrast, a deeply boring, unengaging and alienating experience. Three self-obsessed, self-pitying brothers cross Rajasthan by train, feigning interest in spiritual enlightenment but skating on the surface of things. Anderson doesn't so much satirise the dumb, luxury-lined tourist as simply present him for our consideration. As a result, where we should have laughed at, and with, our protagonists, we find ourselves bored by their emotional ugliness. Surely, it must be possible to make a movie about superficial people on a dull journey that is not of itself superficial and dull?

As dull as this movie is, it might have been forgiveable were it not for one serious mis-step. This centres on Wes Anderson's use of a tragic event as a deus ex machina. His exploitation of an Indian tragedy to facilitate a change in the American protagonists is woefully exploitative, in that he never pays any attention to the impact of this event on the Indian characters. They are merely authentic background details. And this brings me to a wider inconsistency in the piece. For much of this movie, Anderson implicitly criticises superficial tourists who do not engage with the places they travel in and, specifically in the case of India, see it as a means to their own spiritual enlightenment rather than a worthy subject of study in itself. But, on the other hand, Anderson is guilty of exactly the things he is criticises. India is no more than a facilitator that is lightly skated over.

Finally, Anderson's sheer lack of humility is infuriating. Given how generally tedious, emotionally dry and morally vacuous this movie is - how completely unengaged with India - Anderson's musical nod to Satyajit Ray appears presumptuous in the extreme.

THE DARJEELING LIMITED played Venice and London 2007. It opened in Canada and the US earlier this year and is currently on release in the UK, Brazil, Denmark, Sweden, Australia and Norway. It opens in December in Denmark, Sweden, Australia and Norway and in January in Germany, Singapore, Italy, Spain, Russia and Iceland. It opens in Estonia, Turkey and the Netherlands in February and in Japan, Argentina and France in March. It opens in Finland in April 2008.

New Wes Anderson Film Features Deadpan Delivery, Meticulous Art Direction, Characters With Father Issues

LOS ANGELES—Fans who attended a sneak preview Monday of critically acclaimed director Wes Anderson's newest project, THE DARJEELING LIMITED, were surprised to learn that the film features a deadpan comedic tone, highly stylized production design, and a plot centering around unresolved family issues. "What will he think of next?" audience member Michael Cauley said. "And who could have foreseen the elaborately crafted '60s-era aesthetic, melancholy subtext, and quirky nomenclature—to say nothing of the unexpected curveball of casting Owen Wilson, Jason Schwartzman, and Bill Murray?" In a recent review, New York Times film critic A.O. Scott also expressed surprise at the film's cutting-edge soundtrack, which features a Rolling Stones song and three different tracks by the Kinks.

Copyright: The Onion 2007

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM - Oh, for crying out loud!

Shawn Levy, director of NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM, is a man I would gladly have up for crimes against cinema. He brought us those formulaic, un-funny flicks, CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN and JUST MARRIED. While last year's remake of THE PINK PANTHER was better than we had any right to expect it was still seven shades of wrong. Sadly, while NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM is raking in the proverbial phat cash, it will do nothing to leaven Levy's sentence at the Final Day of Judgement.

The basic concept of NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM is known to all thanks to the fact that they started advertising it back in the Spring and used the kind of trailer that gives away the entire plot. Ben Stiller plays the archetypal Loser Dad: he can't hold down a regular job and his kid is starting to look up to the super-successful step-father. But as luck would have it, the inexorable logic of Hollywood means that the Loser Dad will show his true quality when faced with extra-ordinary circumstances. And as we all know: it's not money that matters but true grit and familial love. Which is why we get fed this formulaic bunkum every holiday...

In this particular incarnation, Ben Stiller gets a job as the night watchman at the Museum of Natural History in New York. Thing is, the Museum houses a spooooky gold wall-panel thing that brings all the animals, dinosaurs and statues to life every night! Cue lots of surprisingly pedestrian special effects with dinosaur skeletons, woolly mammoths and Attila the Hun chasing Stiller round the museum. There's an attempt to inject some narrative tension by having a nefarious type attempt to steal the magical wall-hanging.

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM disappoints because the special effects are weak, the narrative arc is tired and there are very few out-and-out jokes. The abiding memory I'll have of this movie will be disappointment that the on-screen talent wasn't better used. I mean, for crying out loud, Ben Stiller was bloody hillarious in ZOOLANDER and DODGEBALL. Dick Van Dyke and Mickey Rooney are comic geniuses who dominated their eras in Hollywood as THE premier entertainers. Steve Coogan's Hollywood career may be patchy but he has shown on British TV how hysterical he can be and Owen Wilson is outstanding even in terrible movies. But the biggest travesty of all is the use (by which I mean exploitation) of Ricky Gervais. He gives a sub-David Brent performance as the Museum Director - a performance that is the unfunny evil twin of his turn in THE OFFICE. Shame on them all for allowing themselves to be sullied by such a banal piece of cinema.

NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM is already on release in India, Israel, Singapore, the USA, Mexico, Australia, the UK, Germany, Indonesia, Russia, South Korea, Thailand and Turkey. It opens on Jan 5th in Estonia and Venezuala, on Jan 11th on Argentina and Brazil, on Jan 18th in Hungary and Iceland and on Jan 26th in Spain. NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM will be released in Italy and Sweden on February 2nd, in Denmark on the 9th, in Belgium, Hong Kong, Netherlands, Finland and Norway on the 15th. It opens in Japan on March 17th 2007.

YOU, ME & DUPREE is unfunny

YOU, ME AND DUPREE is a deeply disappointing romantic-comedy. It's all about high production values and good casting but low on actual laughs. Every bit of quirkiness from the Russo brothers' previous flick, WELCOME TO COLLINWOOD has been bleached out of this blander than blander date flick. But, just to go through the motions, (much like the movie) here's a plot synopsis. Molly (Kate Hudson) is a cute, primary school teacher (movie code for All Round Nice Gal) who happens to be the daughter of a property developer played by Michael Douglas (movie code for mean, greedy, scheming bastard.) Molly marries Carl (Matt Dillon) who is also a nice guy. But Carl is under pressure from the mean father-in-law and also from his best man, Dupree. Dupree is the kind of sad-assed loser who still lives for sports and has no job well into his thirties. He's the kind of guy who moves into your house and sets the couch on fire. But, here's the twist: Dupree is played by Owen Wilson, which means he will be a Love-able Loser. Dupree is sort of responsible for splitting Molly and Carl up (roughly sixty minutes) and then sort of gets them back together (forty minutes.) And then we all go home! Okay, so maybe that was a major plot spoiler, but seriously, I doubt you wouldn't have seen it coming a mile off. All in all, this is a pretty lame-ass excuse for a date movie and a real disappointment. You would do better by renting THE WENDELL BAKER STORY instead. It has basically the same central plot premise (Owen Wilson putting a fork in the path of true love) and also features a cameo from Harry Dean Stanton. Plus, it's really, really funny!

YOU, ME AND DUPREE is already on release in the US, Puerto Rico, Australia, the Netherlands, Thailand, Russia, Iceland and the UK. It opens in Argentina and Mexico on September 1st, Hungary on September 7th, Greece, Israel and Brazil on September 15th and in Germany and Latvia on September 22nd and in Finland on September 29th. YOU, ME AND DUPREE opens in Spain on October 11th, Turkey on October 13th, France on October 18th and Belgium on November 1st.

CARS - auto-porn for the under-twelves!

CARS is an almost perfect summer kids movie. The pedigree is flawless: it comes from the people who brought you TOY STORY, THE INCREDIBLES and MONSTERS INC. The execution is flawless: technically superb, imaginative, innovative. The characters are cute, funny and tug at the heart-strings. The jokes vary from slapstick to satirising Hollywood agents and 60s stoners to cow-tipping. The race scenes are exhilerating and will get your blood pumping. The plot - well, it actually exists and it really sucks you in. And while the movie has those usual earnest life-lessons we always find in kids flicks, it has some extra too: a narrative that is against the corrosive youth-culture of our times and which takes to heart the philosophy of Ferris Bueller: "life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you may miss it."

The story features a cute little red racing car called Lightning McQueen. He's a successful but selfish rookie racer on the verge of his first championship prize/phat endorsement cheque. On the way to his final race he finds himself stuck in nowheres-ville Doc Hollywood-style. Condemned to re-tarmacing Main Street road by the local fuzz, Lightning learns the real meaning of friendship, team-work and success. As cheesy as this stuff is, it's delivered with such good humour and by such endearing characters that I defy you not to get completely caught up in the final grand prix.

So, kudos to the animators and all of the voice cast, not least Owen Wilson who reprises his familiar role of charming but obnoxious frat boy who discovers he has a heart. Jeremy Piven is also especially hillarious as Lightning's sleazy agent, Harv, and as much as I love UK car guru Jeremy Clarkson, I hope it isn't the case that he is replacing Piven in the UK version.

I just can't say enough about how cool this movie is. The only very slight defect is that at 2 hours it's a bit long for really little kids.

CARS is already on release in Australia, Singapore, Canada, the US, France, Switzerland, Hungary, Netherlands, Israel, Aregntina, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, Belgium, Czech Republic, Spain, Hong Kong and Poland. It opens in the UK on July 28th 2006 and Italy, Finland, Norway and Sweden on August 23rd. It reaches Denmark on September 1st, Germany on September 7th, Greece on September 14th and Turkey on September 15th.

THE WEDDING CRASHERS - 50% mediocre frat-pack comedy, 50% damp squib chick flick

I really tried to like THE WEDDING CRASHERS. I even watched it a second time on DVD just to give it another chance. I reckon Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson are some of the funniest actors working today. In fact, Owen Wilson's role in the fantastic romantic comedy THE WENDELL BAKER STORY helped push it into my movie pantheon. So it saddens me to say that this movie is a real let-down. Not a real stinker, just very very mediocre. Let me break it down for you. The first half is a weak frat-boy comedy. Vaughn and Wilson play two guys who crash weddings to pick up ch*cks. The jokes are okay but not laugh-out loud funny - certainly not as good as anything in OLD SCHOOL. Then, about half way through, the movie loses its nerve and switches into a super-cliche love story. Unfortunately, having attempted to create comedy caricatures for the previous 45 minutes, it is hard to empathise with the main characters when they go into the "love story" phase of the film. Eventually the movie just runs out of steam and not even a cameo from Will Ferrell can save it. Worse still, the movie commits the cardinal sin of hiring the Don that is Christopher Walken and then giving him absolutely nothing to do. All in all, having spent forty million dollars, all the producers have done is guarantee the brief popularity of the phrase "ERRONEOUS!"

THE WEDDING CRASHERS is now available on region 1 and region 2 DVD, but seriously, just rent OLD SCHOOL instead.

THE WENDELL BAKER STORY - sweet comedy from three of the four Wilson brothers

THE WENDELL BAKER STORY is a rare find - a comedy that is both sweet and subversive. It is well acted, laugh-out loud funny, sweet without making you want to use a sick-bag and "feel good" in the good sense of the phrase.

Wendell Baker makes a living selling fake drivers licenses from a mobile home to illegal Mexican workers in Texas. When he gets out of jail he takes up a job at a retirement home where he makes friends with the residents, has to deal with a mean head nurse, and tries to get back his ex-girlfriend.

The movie has a super cast. Eva Mendes (Will Smith's squeeze in HITCH) is the woman Wendell tries to win back. The residents of the nursing home include Kris Kristoffersen ("The Blade Trilogy") and Harry Dean Stanton ("Paris, Texas"). One of the funniest scenes in the movie centres on Harry Dean Stanton, who is 80 years of age, chatting up two young chicks in a grocery store.

The movie is written by and stars Luke Wilson, perhaps most famous to multiplex movie-goers as the boyfriend, Emmett, in the "Legally Blonde" films. But when not earning the proverbial phat cash from autopilot "cute boyfriend" roles, Luke Wilson is part of the quirky comedy troupe headed by Wes Anderson, who directed "Bottle Rocket", "Rushmore", The Royal Tenenbaums and "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou". The movie also stars Luke's brother Owen and Seymour Cassell, who are also Wes Anderson regulars.

I think that THE WENDELL BAKER STORY's cast has mis-led some viewers into expecting it to be like a Wes Anderson movie. But they should remember that it is OWEN, not LUKE, Wilson who collaborates with Anderson on his screenplays. This is a very different movie. Less visually indulgent, less blackly funny, and more of a straightforward romantic comedy. Luke and Andrew Wilson (another brother and the director of the movie) should be judged on their own efforts, and while THE WENDELL BAKER STORY is not going to revolutionise the movie industry, it does make us laugh.

I don't know of any release dates for this movie, but it is doing the Festival circuit so keep an eye out...I suspect it may end up (undeservedly) in "straight to video" hell.

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS - the perfect tragicomedy

With the recent release of the deeply disappointing Wes Anderson movie, THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU, I am taking this opportunity to re-examine Anderson’s earlier movies, starting with what I consider to be the best of all, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS. As with THE LIFE AQUATIC, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS is a movie full of eccentric, larger-than-life characters living in a richly-imagined world one degree more whacky than our own. Whether or not you like this film will depend on how far you buy into, and are charmed by, this tragi-comic heightened reality. For my part, I found the family, and therefore the film, utterly winning.

The family is headed by a long absent father named Royal Tenenbaum. He is played by Gene Hackman, who looks like he is having a whale of a time on screen for the first time in years. Royal is a corrupt lawyer who has been ostracised by his family for the past decade, but is seeking reconciliation by any means necessary. In this, he is aided and abetted by his sidekicks, Pagoda and Dusty, the bell-hop at the seedy hotel he has made his home - a classic understated and hilarious cameo performance by Seymour Cassel. In his absence, the family has been headed by Royal’s wife, Etheline, played by Angelica Huston. Etheline is written as a wonderful mother, ever-concerned with her children’s welfare; decent but not credulous. She is seeing an accountant played by Danny Glover - another good, earnest man. The love scenes between the two combine sweetness and comedy in a manner that recent British mockumentary, CONFETTI, entirely failed to pull off. Meanwhile, the children are all having emotional breakdowns. Richie (Luke Wilson) is a failed tennis pro in love with an unattainable woman; Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) is in a loveless marriage and has failed to live up to her early promise as a writer; Chas (Ben Stiller) is in mourning for his wife and is paranoid about the safety of his twin sons, Uzi and Ari. In the mix we also have Ritchie’s oleaginous childhood friend Eli Cash (Owen Wilson), a wildly popular but talentless writer with a drug problem who has long wanted to be a Tenenbaum, and Bill Murray as Margot’s husband. Will it come as any surprise to regular filmgoers to discover that Bill Murray’s character is a melancholy and world-weary middle-aged man?

As can be seen from these short character descriptions, the Royal Tenenbaums is about a bunch of troubled people, who are drawn back to the family in search of solace – whether or not they were part of the family in the first place. As each character comes to terms with awkward reality, the tone of the movie alternates between tragedy and comedy with such ease as to make this a master-class for screen-writers. Both the tragic and comic scenes are elevated to perfect pitch and the film puts, to my mind, not a foot wrong. Of course, as with all Wes Anderson movies, the production design and sound-track are also out-standing. The attention to detail is staggering - from whimsically designed wallpaper, to the book covers of the novels that the characters write, to the brand of beaten-up old taxis that roam the streets of this re-imagined New York. Meanwhile, the sound-track features mournful songs from Nico, Dylan, Elliott Smith, The Stones, Nick Drake and Lou Reed. However, unlike THE LIFE AQUATIC, the rich design never seems self-indulgent. Where LIFE AQUATIC dragged, so that all the audience had to do was look at the beautiful sets, the foreground action of TENENBAUMS always has us rapt. The cute incidental background details are just that. It is this delicate balance between fascinating foreground action and the hints of a fully developed world behind it that makes TENENBAUMS one of my favourite movies.

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS is out on DVD.

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU may be the most disappointing movie of 2005

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU may well be, for me, the most disappointing movie of 2005. This is because it is made by a director, Wes Anderson, whose previous films I have loved without reservation. Given that THE LIFE AQUATIC stars many of the same actors, covers many of the same themes, and lives in the same eccentric, richly-designed world, what went wrong? To cut a long story short, I think "sameness" is the problem. First, there is a problem when we see the same actors portray variations on the same character time and time again. In the case of THE LIFE AQUATIC the key culprit is Bill Murray. In the second half of his career he seems to be perfecting the role of world-weary, painfully self-aware, benumbed wanderer. Granted he is once again fantastic in this movie, but oh my goodness, the whole routine does seem a little tired. It was breathtaking in RUSHMORE, subtley different but still compelling in ROYAL TENENBAUMS, but by the time we have seen LOST IN TRANSLATION and the forthcoming BROKEN FLOWERS... well you get the picture. Ditto seeing Owen Wilson once again as the innocent-idiot; Angelica Huston as the wise-put-upon wife; and let us not forget the obligatory Indian guy. It just seems like Wes Anderson has his zone of comfort as far as characters are concerned.

Similarly, the thematic material is well-worn - disappointed sons and reluctant fathers; super-fan outsiders who desperately want to be part of the Cool group; relationships between the sexes that are fraught with misunderstandings - love triangles and love squares; the difficulty of dreamers to deal with the real world of hard cash; and the difficulty of dreamers to continue to believe in themselves when all around them doubt The Plan. We've been here before. Indeed, we've been here ever since BOTTLE ROCKET.

Moreover, all those incidental but important features of a movie that make up the tone of the picture - production design, sound-track - have taken over the asylum. It used to be that you were compelled to watch a Wes Anderson movie two or three times just to take in the richness of the set design and remember just what that cool track was. But now, the cute little details of set design are all there is. I so wanted to be interested in Steve Zissou 's (for which read Jacques Cousteau's) journey to hunt down the mythic jaguar shark and avenge the death of his partner Esteban. I so wanted to be fascinated by the relationship between Steve and his long-lost son, Ned. But somehow, every time the movie threatened to give us a bit of character development we got another scene with a cute red bobble hat, or crew-member Pele dos Santos (Seu Jorge) singing a David Bowie song. For, in the final analysis, this movie is a triumph of style, tone and mood over the substance that is the narrative arc and character development.

What I guess it all comes down to is that the movie just isn't as funny as TENENBAUMS. Perhaps this is because Anderson's usual writing partner, Owen Wilson, has been replaced by Noah Baumbach? Or perhaps it just signals that what was once magical and fascinating and amusing has now become stale. I tend toward the latter.

THE LIFE AQUATIC WITH STEVE ZISSOU opened in the US last fall, and opens in the UK today. It opens in France on March 9th 2005, and in Austrian and Germany on March 17th.