HOME

HOME is a lovely children's animated movie - funny, beautifully imagined and with a lovely message.  It has received mixed reviews and I really don't get it - I had a wonderful time watching this film.

The movie stars THE BIG BANG THEORY's Jim Parsons as another misfit alien struggling to relate to normal humans(!) - an alien called Oh.  Oh is a Boov - and his species has invaded Earth, fleeing the evil Gorg, and put resettled all humans in Australia. All humans except a young girl called Tip (Rihanna), who was saved from resettlement when her pet cat fooled the detector beams.  Oh is sweet and naive and prone to mistakes, like when he mistakenly emails the entirely galaxy inviting them to his housewarming, including the evil Gorg. As a result both he and Tip are fugitives, and team up for a joint adventure as she tries to find her mum.  On the way, we see two supposedly warring people get to know each other and a bond of true friendship form. 

I really love Jim Parsons, and I think your tolerance for Oh, and his Yoda'd syntax will depend on whether you find his super-expressive speech funny. I also thought Rihanna did a great job acting as Tip, although the Rihanna heavy sound-track got wearing after a while. But the real voice star is Steve Martin, who I haven't seen/heard for YEARS as the cowardly and impetuous Boov leader. Great to have him back.  Ultimately though, the true delight in this film is its visual imagination. The idea that Oh could modify Tip's car with all the machines in a 7-11 so that it's powered by slushies and spits out nachos and popcorn as weapons.  I love how the Boov change colour to show emotion and the sheer cute plasticity of them. And the final twist, though slightly predictable, is so sweetly imagined that I couldn't help but love it.

So, overall, a good old-fashioned warmly funny, earnest children's comedy adventure.  There's no post-modern cynicism here. Just a good old-fashioned belief in friendship and family.

HOME has a running time of 94 minutes and is rated PG.   The movie is on global release.

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. 

IT'S COMPLICATED - fails to be subversive

IT'S COMPLICATED wants to be a romantic-comedy that subverts convention by giving us an old formerly married couple indulging in an affair. Whether or not you will like this film basically rests on whether you find the concept of Meryl Streep declaring, "turns out, I'm a bit of a slut" funny or not. Sadly, writer-director Nancy Meyers does not develop the humour beyond the initial concept. Oh, I forget, she has ex-husband and current lover Alec Baldwin sneak around Meryl's house peering into windows at her new date (a completely under-used Steve Martin). Baldwin trips and falls. Oh, how funny.

Thin comedy aside, what else does this movie offer? A risible attempt to actually examine the impact this affair would have on the husband's new younger wife, her son, and on the couple's grown children. Any attempt at emotional profundity is undercut by the fact that the script is superficial; Alec Baldwin simply doesn't have the acting range; and Meryl Streep chooses not to use her god-given talent but instead simply mugs to camera.

Worst of all, this movie - which seeks to oh so daringly depict love among the fifty-somethings as a valid concern in our youth-obsessed age - is itself ludicrously obsessed with surface appearance. Indeed, it plays less like a rom-com and more like a feature length advertisement for life in Santa Barbara - all gorgeous properties, perfect interior design, chi-chi food stores, and sweeping drives. When Meryl Streep laments the fact that it took her ten years to get over her divorce and feel confident enough to remodel her house and get the kitchen she always wanted, you look at her current kitchen and wander what the fuck is her problem.

Overall, this is a movie about a bunch of people who live a life of over-designed ease. They are all basically self-obsessed and unlikeable. I didn't buy that they were having a genuine emotional journey. I didn't want them to live happily ever after. I wanted the movie to end very, very quickly indeed.

IT'S COMPLICATED was released in the US, Belgium, France, Greece, Hungary, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Canada, Finland, Spain and Norway in 2009. It is currently on release in the UK, Australia and Argentina. It opens next weekend in Israel, Russia, Singapore and Estonia and opens on the 21st in Denmark, Germany and Sweden. It opens in Croatia on January 28th, in Romania on February 19th, in Japan on February 19th and in Brazil on February 26th. It opens in Turkey on March 5th and in Italy on March 19th.

THE PINK PANTHER 2 - Cinema Hate-Crime

Peter Sellers made five great comedies playing the incapable but serendipitous French cop, Inspector Clouseau. Herbert Lom seethed with anger as his boss. Burt Kwouk exemplified physical comedy genius as his side-kick Cato. Those movies are Cinema Gold. That Steve Martin fool-headedly decided to remake the Clouseau movies, churning out the piss-poor 2006 film, was bad enough. That he lacked humility enough to try it again is unforgivable. The resulting cinema dreck troubled the multiplexes only briefly, and rolled onto DVD with a mere USD70million gross. Here's hoping that's the end of this humiliating little experiment.

As to the particulars, the plot sees The Tornado stealing priceless world historical arefacts as well as the eponymous French diamond. An international dream team of cops is brought together to track them down. Clouseau embarasses them all, almost loses his sweet-heart Nicole, but finally foils the thief. The movie is set in a stylised picture-postcard Europe, and peopled with characters in stylised costumes and deliberately hammy accents. One can only assume that the likes of Jeremy Irons, Lily Tomlin, Alfred Molina, Jean Reno and Andy Garcia were doing it for the phat cash alone. The exception is Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, who presumably also did it to raise her profile in Western cinema, and whose uneven Anglo-Brit accent is presumably not deliberate. The physical comedy is predictable and worst of all, leans heavily on CGI. The direction is competent at best. The plot is utterly predictable. The only surprising thing about the film is that it us written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H Weber who also wrote 500 DAYS OF SUMMER.

THE PINK PANTHER was released in spring 2009 and is available on DVD.

BABY MAMA - at best mediocre, at worst hypocritical

BABY MAMA is meant to be a warm-hearted romantic comedy about an uptight career woman who hires a white trash surrogate mother to give her a baby. It's meant to be an "odd couple" movie in which both women emerge better for the experience. It's also meant to be a rom-com in which the path of true love in kinked by the fact that the career woman doesn't tell her implausibly understanding boyfriend what she's up to.

The problem is that BABY MAMA isn't very funny, despite being penned by SNL writer Michael McCullers and starring brilliant comediennes Amy Poehler and Tina Fey. There aren't enough insightful gags, and what gags there are rely on really lazy sight/aural gags - for instance, the birthing teacher with a lisp.

While you're not laughing you might notice the pedestrian direction, the lack of chemistry between Tina Fey and her love interest (the always charming Greg Kinnear), and the fact that Dax Shepherd and Romany Malco almost steal the show. You might also notice the remarkable irony with which a script that supports a woman's right to have a baby at 37 goes right ahead and mocks another woman having kids at an old age. Huh? You might also notice that the writer loses his balls in the final reel to give us all a soft slushy ending that is utterly unearned.

BABY MAMA is on global release.

HORTON HEARS A WHO! - by far the best of the recent Dr Seuss adaptations

Like many of you, I grew up reading Dr Seuss, so his books are a cherished part of my childhood.* That's why it hurt so much when Jim Carrey and Mike Myers' live action versions of his books were less CAT IN THE HAT than Smelly Cat. But prejudice aside, I am pleased to report that HORTON HEARS A WHO! is a giant step forward. First off, the minute you see the animation you realise how intrinsically right it is to forgo actors dressed in prosthetics. Dr Seuss should feel whimsical and magical rather than forced and deliberate. And no matter how good Carrey and Myers are as comedians, they never managed to make all that make-up seem, well, natural. Directors Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino also make the right choice in keeping a lot of Dr Seuss' famous rhyming couplets in a voice-over narration from Charles Osgood. I particularly liked their little conceit of having Horton day-dream in Seuss' trademark 2-D style!

But back to basics. For those who don't know, you're in for a treat! Horton is a large, happy-go-lucky elephant who stumbles upon a delicate little speck sitting on a flower. He hears a little voice and makes contact with the tiny little Mayor of Who-ville, who lives in a miniature world upon that very speck. Horton and the Mayor realise that unless Horton can put the speck in a safe place, Who-ville will be destroyed by all the commotion. But first, Horton and the Mayor have to gather the courage to hold on to their belief in each other's existence; and to fight for the right to br heard, no matter how big or how small they are.

The directors handle the animation beautifully and the voice-cast also do a superb job. Steve Carell is charming as the Mayor and Jim Carrey is absolutely hillarious in a slightly more modulated performance than he typically gives. The script-writers manage to keep to a minimum the post-modern in-jokes that cover modern animation like poisonous pustules. And the defiantly pop-culture reference they do include - having Horton imagine himself as a manga hero - is absolutely brilliant. My only slight criticism is that the material is too thin for the run-time. Frankly, they could've trimmed the film down to 70 minutes and we would have all gone home as happy as after 85 minutes but without having mainlined as much glucose from the tofee popcorn.

HORTON HEARS A WHO is on release in the USA, Argentina, Chile, Germany, Russia, Singapore, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Estonia, Iceland, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway, Spain, Belgium and the UK. It opens next week in Egypt, the Netherlands, the Philippines, Australia, Hong Kong and Croatia. It opens on March 27th in Croatia. It opens in April in France, the Czech Republic, Greece, Israel, Italy and Turkey. It opens in May in South Korea and in Japan in July.

*I even went to the same college as Dr Seuss, although I must confess that by the age of 16, the fact that John Le Carre was an old boy was far more impressive to me.

THE PINK PANTHER - Probably not the worst movie of 2006

Look. This movie is not the worst movie ever made. It has the odd laugh. It's just not brilliant. And it's even more obviously not brilliant when you compare it to the original Peter Sellers' Pink Panther movies. But you know what? Let's cut it some slack. The original Panther flicks were Pure Class. Saying these remakes are not as good is like saying that Tsotsi is a worse film than Kung Fu Hustle. It's a meaningless statement beacuse every movie is worse than Kung Fu Hustle.

What we have here is Steve Martin as bumbling French idiot, Inspector Clousseau, playing the Sellars part with an Allo Allo accent and happily tripping over furniture and into women with gay abandon. He is commissioned by the Chief of Police, Kevin Kline in the Herbert Lom part, to catch an infamous thief. As his right-hand man, he has "Ponton" - a new character played by Jean Reno. The eye-candy is Beyonce and no, dear reader, there is no Burt Kwouk replacement. NO KATO. I was sad to realise that Jackie Chan had not finally taken up the role. I love KATO. I used to go to restaurents in Chinatown just because Burt Kwouk had recommended them in TIME OUT. Burt Kwouk was the only reason I used to tune in to Harry Hill. But you know, upon reconsideration, I am pleased that the memory of Kato is unsullied.

You get a lot of slapstick comedy, some of which works, most of which doesn't. You get some jingoistic comedy at the expense of the French. We Brits have been doing this for centuries, and believe me, we can come up with better stuff. Clearly all these actors are far better than the material they have been given, although I have to say that after the crimes against cinema that were Cheaper by the Dozen and Shopgirl, I am starting to have my doubts about Steve Martin. Alls I hope is that they were paid a whole lot and can now "afford" to do some nice low-budget indie films as atonement. As I said, this is a harmless movie. But if you have one ounce of respect for Peter Sellars you'll put your money back in your pocket and rent A SHOT IN THE DARK instead.

THE PINK PANTHER opens in the UK on Friday 17th March 2006 and is already release in much of continental Europe and in the US.

SHOPGIRL - truly painful, often pretentious, sometimes funny

I hated SHOPGIRL almost before it began. The opening credits feauture a logo for the production company, "Hyde Park Films". All good, except that the logo features a picture of Tower Bridge?! Sounds petty, I know, but you can't mess around with Zone One iconography and still be my friend. As the opening credits rolled I hated this film even more: melodramatic, irritating orchestral score; pretentious and pointless tracking photography; and a grating faux-naif voice-over from writer/actor Steve Martin. Steve Martin's very existence pisses me off. In 1989, he sold his soul to Hollywood plastic surgeons. Instead of manic comedy we get formulaic remakes and soupy family "entertainment". I introduce Sergeant Bilko and Cheaper by the Dozen 1 and 2 into evidence for the prosecution.

Anyways, back to SHOPGIRL. Steve Martin introduces our heroine, Mirabelle, as she goes about her mundane life. Mirabelle, played by the wonderful Claire Danes, is an aspiring artist who works on the glove counter at Saks Fifth Avenue in LA in order to help pay off her student debt. The movie tells the tale of how Mirabelle is romanced by two men. One is a sixty year old rich lecher played by Martin: the other is a young, hapless, romantic, amplifier-salesman, played by Jason Schwartzman. The scenes involving Martin are truly painful to watch. Danes self-knowledge - her choice to be a victim of this old lecher - is horrible to witness. When Martin touches her naked body, our skin crawls. I know that this is the desired effect but somehow it is done so often and in such a manner that it becomes simply off-putting. Moreover, every time it happens, we have that same over-wheening orchestral score - the same pretentious cinematography. Sure, the film makes some good points about the commoditisation of relationships, but the sheer weight of the pretentious visual and aural imagery loaded onto this slender subject matter threaten to send this movie up its own ass. The only saving grace of the flick - the factor that kept me in the cinema to the end - is Jason Schwartzman's performance. Every time he comes back into frame I breathed a sigh of relief. We were back to sweet, quirky comedy - the natural habitat of the Indie movie.

Overall, SHOPGIRL may be one of the most disappointing movies of 2005. After all, Steve Martin was, once upon a time, a great comedian. Anand Tucker, the director, last graced our screens with the wonderful riff on the life of the du Pre family, Hillary and Jackie - one of my all-time favourite movies. The film is also shot by Peter Suchitzky, the DP from A History of Violence, Spider, Existenz, Mars Attacks, not to mention the best of the Star Wars flicks, The Empire Strikes Back. With so much talent on the roster, it is something of an achievement to have made such an unengaging, frustrating flick. At one point in the flick, the hapless suitor asks Mirabelle, "Can I kiss you or what?" She responds, "The point being?" I left the cinema asking the same question.

SHOPGIRL is on limited release in the US and UK. There is no scheduled release date for France, Germany or Austria.