SOMETHING BORROWED- Review

Not since Vampires Suck has there been such a momentously shit film as to prompt a Lolcats style banner to the effect of "FUCK THIS MOVIE". This is a film that slightly deviates from the predictable romantic comedy formula but in all of the wrong directions. A film that is a torturous and toxic viewing experience. A film that happens to star Kate Hudson. This is the neutron bomb, folks- this is Something Borrowed.

The premise itself is not entirely uninteresting. Two best friends, Rachel and Darcy, are in love with the same bloke, Dex. Dex and Rachel were study buds, and had a painfully shy mutual affection for one another all through law school. He ended up engaged to Darcy, and after a drunken surprise birthday party, Rachel winds up sleeping with Dex. Interested? Here's where they go wrong.

The principal character trait in this one, often despicably brought forward as a virtue rather than a foible, is cowardice. Dex is too cowardly to break off his engagement and go for Rachel, and Rachel is cowardly to a cartoonish degree, to the point where the entire message of the film is that she should think about herself rather than thinking of others. Isn't that almost like a Russian reversal of most romantic comedy plots?

If you haven't gathered from my strident hatred for the film so far, it's another of those romantic comedies that's neither romantic nor funny. Best typified by the recent oeuvre of Allan Loeb, the principal flaw in the mainstream genre is that characters won't communicate with one another. Nobody simply comes out and suggests that talking like grown-ups might be a more desirable course of action. Something Borrowed represents a film in which that problem is lampshaded and yet still never addressed.

That, to me, is even worse. The film is not simply being inept- it revels in its ineptitude and the immaturity of its characters. It's also a film that has even less faith in its own central conceit than the audience will. By Rachel's inaction, you might think her best friend would be the more sympathetic character, but the film goes to pains to practically portray Darcy as a supervillain. She's obnoxious, boorish and twatty, and in its own way, that makes Kate Hudson's performance quite a success.

Ginnifer Goodwin is a likeable enough actress, but there's only so much you can do with a heroine of such inaction, and she fails to even do much of that. Many fans of the perpetually vanilla John Krasinski have this down on their to-watch list. He's similarly afflicted as the Gay Best Friend, mired in further inaction by the fact that his character is heterosexual. Furthermore, he's another unlikeable bumbag who represses everything rather than putting it out where it might be less painful to watch. At one point he tells an old flame, who is demonised for weak comic effect, that he's gay rather than simply say he's not into her.

None of this is funny. None of it is clever. Some of it is just insanely offensive, actually. It spends so much of its 111 minutes consoling itself that it's not a film about unlikeable characters prolonging their own agony that it doesn't notice how it's a film about unlikeable characters prolonging their own agony, and the audience's agony. It's another film in which moneyed arseholes superficially hash out their problems as though they're insecure teenagers. In a film that principally features moneyed fucknuts hashing out their problems in a state of utter self-absorption, and the supposedly sympathetic Rachel's whole character arc is to make her more selfish, what the hell is there to care about?

Does anybody actually like Kate Hudson? Her fanbase must be concealed and I fear they may strike at any moment like stupid ninjas, because it's on her name that Something Borrowed is sold. So I spit on her name, for inflicting any part of this emotionally infantile, self-absorbed, self-consolatory twatastrophe upon the planet. It is, finally, a romantic comedy that doesn't end the way you'd expect, but at what cost? The actual ending is not surprising so much as unbelievably crass and unconsidered, just like the rest of it. If cinema sinks lower this year, I'm quitting.

Something Borrowed is now showing in cinemas nationwide- don't you give it a fucking penny.
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If you've seen Something Borrowed, why not share your comments below? Oh, and speaking of Vampires Suck, guess what? As if this week couldn't get any worse, this happens...

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

JUST GO WITH IT- Review

From R-L: Twat, Twat, Surprisingly Good

Consulting the IMDB, I realised today that before Just Go with It, the last time I saw a Jennifer Aniston film at the cinema was The Break Up, all the way back in 2006. For Adam Sandler, same story (save for a Funny People shaped blip) with Click. After seeing Just Go with It, I realise I haven't particularly missed either of them.

Sandler plays Danny, a man-whore plastic surgeon, and Aniston plays Katherine, his hard-working secretary. Danny's trademark ploy with women is to wear a fake wedding ring and pretend that he's in a deeply unhappy marriage in order to get laid. When the ring messes up his chances with a woman he has something more than utter contempt for, maths teacher Palmer, he constructs an elaborate web of lies to cover his mistake, pulling in Katherine and her two kids.

After an experience like this, I often find myself looking for someone to blame. Forgoing Adam Sandler, who should know better after sending himself up so richly in Funny People, and Jennifer Aniston, who is surprisingly the best thing about this film by far, then the prime suspect is Dennis Dugan. He's a frequent collaborator with Sandler, and he's been likened to a neutron bomb to comedy. But then you look at the screenplay credits, and you find Allan Loeb. Loeeeeb!

This man, who reduces me to fits of Shatner-esque screaming rage, has had two credits in the last 12 months that particularly stand out to me. First, on last year's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which subsisted upon risible dialogue like "Greed got greedier." More recently, there's The Dilemma, which somehow subsisted on being fucking awful. If this seems unreasonable, that's because I review films, but Loeb's now been involved in three films I really hated. Focusing on this minute bit of trivia, he's my new nemesis.

I hate to call children Twats, but I will say that there's more than one Twat in this picture.

At his door, I lie most of the blame for the repulsive waste that is Just Go with It, because it exploits an audience's willing suspension of disbelief beyond endurance, just like The Dilemma did. As with that film, I thought of a simple solution to all of the conflict within the film that would have worked just ten minutes in, without us having to be subjected to the following 106 minutes. Instead, no one thinks of my perfectly workable solution of pretending to be married to avoid getting hit on by women who want to shag a plastic surgeon, and so the stakes build up like an enormous Jenga tower made out of Twats.

Sandler's character, as so many of his characters are nowadays, is an capital-T Twat. He's clearly capable of better if Punch-Drunk Love and, yes, even Funny People demonstrated, but he's using his star power for evil these days, it seems. Let's look at some of the other characters' backgrounds- Palmer is a maths teacher. Now, Palmer is played by model Brooklyn Decker, and the film objectifies her just as much as the marketing. No matter how much her character's stupidity is played up, we saw her being a maths teacher, so that's acceptable- she's just a silly woman, after all, right?

Jennifer Aniston, though trying her best with the awful detritus she's given, is even more marginalised and trodden upon during the proceedings, being utterly passive and apparently wearing glasses that made her look so dowdy that nobody noticed until she takes them off that she's actually, well, Jennifer Aniston. Then there's the "comedy" cousin, the "comedy" disfigured plastic surgery patient and the obligatory precocious little twats, one of whom adopts the most grating British accent imaginable because it's a "cute character quirk" that actually makes a real life American version of Battle Royale seem a more endearing concept.

Something happened while I was watching this film that never, ever happens. Something happened that so insulted my intelligence that I had to actually walk out of the screening to gather myself for a minute. It's a joke about a sheep. If you've seen it, I'm talking about the call back, not the first instance. This highlight of comic genius is heralded by the clunkiest set-up ever, delivered by a wooden actress, and it pushed my endurance beyond limits. I returned a minute or so later, but it's a first for me. Shit often stinks so much that I hold my nose, but it's rarely so offensive that I can't even look at it.

How many laughs did it raise? Just one, at a visual gag that would be a minor highlight in another film. That gives a ratio between minutes of screen time and funny jokes of 116 to one. There's no type of bad film I hate more than a bad comedy. Did I mention that this film is far, far too fucking long? I think I've already given the impression that it's effluvient self-indulgence of the basest kind, but it's the amount of time it wastes that really grinds my gears. 116 minutes is too long and yet still apparently not long enough to actually bring a conclusion to the leaning tower of a narrative, which is explained away in a narrated montage in the last two minutes of the film.

"Why can't you be a Twat like the rest of us?"

Weirdly, my new nemesis Allan Loeb has compensated for his earlier efforts on The Dilemma in penning Just Go with It, a film that's even worse! It's so bad that it makes you yearn for The Dilemma, even though it's only marginally less shit. He cannot be allowed to go on doing this- watching this film already feels like your brain is being deprived of oxygen for almost two hours. Blame could be assigned elsewhere, but it's the genuinely horrible script that really puts this film through the bottom of the barrel. The queasiest and most abominable kind of film.

Just Go with It is now showing in cinemas nationwide,
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If you've seen Just Go with It, why not share your comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

YOGI BEAR- The Schrödinger's Bear Experiment

This is going to be a short one. Largely because there's very little to say about this film that hasn't already been said in my proper review for Den of Geek, but also because even before I wrote that other review, there's very little to say about this film that would surprise anyone.

Yogi Bear is shit. If that's all you need to know about the film, then come back tomorrow when I'll be talking about the Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston romcom vehicle Just Go With It. But if you'll have a little more patience, maybe we can talk cod quantum mechanics and get some interesting scientific discourse out of the turmoil.

Here's a video you might have already seen. Courtesy of YouTube user estefez, it's an unofficial alternate ending to Yogi Bear that plays out something like the death of Jesse James in Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. With nothing short of ridiculous optimism, I wondered if I could expect that ending into the actual film, in a Schrödinger's Cat style experiment.

So as long as I couldn't see the ending, it could be the death scene AND something much less interesting simultaneously. Up until the ending though, we all see the film as a closed box, looking a bit like this...

It's a talking bear pictured above, which is for some silly reason, the least of Yogi Bear's plot, which is more concerned with environmental messages and hackneyed "They're going to kill trees unless we stop Them!" gubbins. Given the carbon emissions that probably came from the production of this debacle, the closest it comes to being green is in recycling plots and gags that we've seen before in other films; other rubbish films, for that matter.

Its reluctance to bring in hip pop culture references to modernise the character is as close to charm the film ever gets, in between Dan Aykroyd's anybody-could-do-this impression of the title character and the predictable joyless mush that is the script. Justin Timberlake, Anna Faris and Stephen Daly might be trying harder than the rest of the cast, but there's only so much you can do with a script that looks for all the world like it was written with Crayolas.

It's not merely a case of over-analysing a film intended for children, because my issue with the film, and I think most children would agree, is that children are smarter than this film. These are children who flocked to see Toy Story 3 and How to Train Your Dragon in the last 12 months. You can't give kids Smarties and then go back to giving them radishes at snack time, just as you can't go from showing them proper family films to expecting them to just sit there and endure Yogi Bear.

Still, if it's that unpleasant, perhaps the fundamental misunderstanding that was my Schrödinger's Bear experiment could pay off. The 3D puts you right there in the film, right? Maybe if I expected that ending enough, it could transpire?

Alas, however much you expect this...

... you're still gonna end up with this.

The bottom line is, watching the title character tool around for any sustained period will make you wish for that ending instead of expecting it, and that's potentially where the theory falls down. My experiment was a failure, but then so is this film. Give it a miss, eh?

Yogi Bear is now showing in 2D and 3D at cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Yogi Bear, why not share your comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

THE DILEMMA- Review

Whenever Vince Vaughn seems to be having fun, you know it's going to hurt.

On Monday, we saw that a romantic comedy can be salvaged from mediocrity or outright awfulness by good casting. Today, we see how a romantic comedy that features Jennifer Connelly and Winona Ryder, directed by Ron Howard, can be utterly fucked up by becoming Vince Vaughn-centric.

The Dilemma has a simple plot, or it should, anyway. Ronny is a reformed gambling addict who looks up to his best friend Nick and his wife Geneva. Ronny and Nick are in business together, and they're on the cusp of selling a new engine design to Dodge when Ronny catches Geneva in an affair with another man. His dilemma is in whether or not he should spill the beans to Nick as their deadline with Dodge approaches.

For the sake of full disclosure, let's put the cards on the table early on. I hated The Dilemma. Just about every bit of its stultifying 111 minute running time was offensive to my eyes, ears, brain and face. Even as a self-proclaimed Vince Vaughn detractor, I went in wanting to like this. Even though I'd heard negative reviews, I had heard enough positive things to pique my curiosity about seeing it.

Let's list those positive things then, as seen from where I sat in the cinema. The best thing about The Dilemma is Channing Tatum. Yes, that's Step Up and Dear John star Channing Tatum. That should tell you all you need to know, but to be completely fair to Tatum and to the film, his character was the only one to hit my deprived funny bone all the way through, and he did a fine job of it. Of course, the representation of his character is just one of the many problems of the larger film, but I'd go so far as to say that this is actually his best role, and his best performance.

On the whole though, this is a film about Vince Vaughn. It's not just a principled dislike of Vaughn that makes that a bad thing in this case. He's just the person with the least to like about him, in all of this. His character, Ronny, is in a situation that might at least provoke sympathy, and get viewers asking how they would react in his situation. The problem is that the answer to that question is always going to be "Not like that". He fills that huge running time with a cavalcade of dickery and supposedly good-intentioned slapstick. And worst of all, just so you can tell we're supposed to like him, the characters all take the time out to appreciate how hard all of this has been for him, as though his feelings would be most damaged by the explosion of someone else's marriage.

Who's there to appreciate how hard the events have this film have been for me? Hm? Certainly not Kevin James, who finally joins my shit-list just a little later than he figured on everyone else's. I didn't mind him in Paul Blart- Mall Cop and I missed Grown Ups entirely. Certainly not Winona Ryder and Jennifer Connelly, neither of whom have anything to do as they watch from the sidelines and appear to be monstrous and submissive, respectively. And certainly not Ron Howard, who really, really ought to know better by now.

It's not just the unintentionally funny token appearance of his brother Clint, more famously seen in the movies of Uwe Boll than in anything Ron has to offer. It's the way that this entire film feels like a product fixated upon the white heterosexual male who most often goes to the movies, quantified by box office spreadsheets and charts, rather than a film by an actual human being, least of all Ron Howard. It's hideously white, souped up by manful discussion of cars and sports and other cool stuff that's cool, and it has an ugly passive-agressive homophobic streak. All of this without ever forging an emotional connection. Or even raising a laugh that doesn't involve Channing Tatum.

The Dilemma is a baggy and self-indulgent stinker that's over-directed, over-developed and overdone. And in amongst all of that, most of the jokes fail to land, making it an excruciating watch, especially in the first hour. I'd like to think that it's not just an ingrained hatred of Vince Vaughn that led me to this conclusion, but it's more than enough reason on its own to hate this fucking movie. I never walk out of films at the cinema, but this one drove me close to the edge. Perhaps that surprisingly funny turn by Channing Tatum was calculated to coincide with my endurance breaking, because there's no latching onto anything else in this shite.

The Dilemma is now playing in cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen The Dilemma, why not share your comments below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

The Mad Prophet's Bottom 10 Films of 2010

Happy New Year! Out with the old, in with the new, and whatnot! We'll miss 2010, as we're thrust into the cold light of 2011. As we leave behind cinema like Inception and The Social Network and squint at the uncertain future to be had in a whole year's worth of upcoming movies. As we slowly and sickeningly realise that we're once again in a year that has a new Transformers film scheduled for release.

But you know, 2010 wasn't all great. If I compile a bottom 10 list, for instance, there still wouldn't be enough room for some of the really rubbish stuff. I'd have to give dishonourable mentions to such joyless films as From Paris With Love and Wall Street- Money Never Sleeps and Takers just because I couldn't fit them into the ten spaces available.

What would that look like, that bottom 10? Seeing as how we're waiting around for the final 10 favourites, let's pinch our noses and have a gander...

10. The Last Airbender (dir. M. Night Shyamalan)

"So low/high on the list?", I hear you cry in dismay? There was a point where I at least conceded the thrill of the special effects and the cinematography by Lord of the Rings DP Andrew Lesnie was enough to elevate this one out of the pits of the year. However, I can't discount how shit the story and everything else about it was, no matter how much I like the source material. A wasted opportunity of cataclysmic awfulness- go and watch the season of the animated series that this film is based on instead.

9. Shank (dir. Mo Ali)

Only in compiling this list did I realise that I forgot to review this film on here, but I did cover it for Den of Geek. In a world where nobody uses an S where a Z will do, this comes as a cross between Mad Max and Ken Korda's magnum opus Speeding on the Needlebliss, from The Adam and Joe Show. The thing reeks of inexperience in a way that I can't forgive. It shares its name with an apparently much better film from 2009, which sucks because it's already confused enough without being confused with something else.

8. Little Fockers (dir. Paul Weitz)

One of two late entries on the list, Little Fockers marks the boiling point for the complete combustion of Robert DeNiro's career. It's lazy, it sets up jokes that go nowhere, and it also has jokes with set-ups that are entirely too obvious, and most depressingly, it's DeNiro's second film on the trot that co-stars Jessica Alba. It has a disjointed narrative, in which there is no development of characters, and neither are there any laughs to be had. Who cares if the actors had fun making it? I had no bloody fun watching it.

7. Life as We Know It (dir. Greg Berlanti)

Filmed on location on planet Earth, Life as We Know It is a thing of perverse contrivance, which has nothing even close to the romantic feelings it's supposed to evoke. Katherine Heigl continues to be such a hateful presence that she crushes every leading man she's paired with underfoot in mushy displays of obnoxious behaviour and self-importance. Poor Josh Duhamel, is what I'd say if he were any better. Predictable, inscrutable, and once again, capital-P Perverse.

6. A Nightmare On Elm Street (dir. Samuel Bayer)

What is it about brown and green colour-grading that's so popular in shit American horror movies these days? Is it that watching through the fug of what looks like shit and snot is meant to distance us as viewers from just how excruciatingly bad Platinum Dunes remakes like A Nightmare On Elm Street actually are. This is the second year running that Michael Bay's horror-raping production company has made something unworthy enough for the bottom 10, and in 2011, we're promised a remake of The Birds. Yes, Hitchcock's The Birds. In that much at least, I'm very scared, but nothing else is frightening in movies like this.

5. Valentine's Day (dir. Garry Marshall)

The existence of this one is probably least surprising of all the films on this list- the world was yearning for that film that crossed Short Cuts with one of those 15-word crossword magazine tie-breakers that starts "Love is..." This vomit-worthy ensemble piece has more loose threads than a particularly unhinged jumper, and yet nothing to really grab onto. There are some starring here who know better, and had better work in 2010, but it doesn't change how I had to sit through a whole two hours of this.

4. Jonah Hex (dir. Jimmy Hayward)

This should be the subject of an episode of CSI at some point. Where did it go wrong? Which pillock cast Megan Fox? What was up with that prosthetic that stifled Josh Brolin so? Why was John Malkovich so rubbish? And was it really, as I suspected, directed by the horse who played Clint Eastwood's steed in the Dollars trilogy? The studio cattle brand might be all over its arse and it feels like watching the subject of a cold case investigation and wondering what happened to this Western along the way that mussed it up to be so crap.

3. Old Dogs (dir. Walt Becker)

For American audiences, this was one of the worst films of 2009, and it finally made a plop into UK cinemas in March. The worst out of this travesty is clearly John Travolta- at least Robin Williams redeemed himself later in the year with World's Greatest Dad, but Travolta only had the similarly execrable From Paris With Love. Together, they shared a screen in the most anti-Disney film imaginable, full of corporate back-and-forth, lame and occasionally racist jokes, and Seth Green being embraced by a gorilla.

2. Gulliver's Travels (dir. Rob Letterman)

The other late entry on the list is one I really wanted to put at #1/#150, but seeing as how it's failing massively at the box office anyway, it almost feels like it isn't doing enough harm. It harmed me though, filled as it was with outright offensive awfulness. It becomes ironic because of it's utterly un-ironic approach to depicting some little people who all gratefully accept whatever mass-culture detritus Jack Black has to give them, and now all of us "little people" aren't bothering to take this crap. Well, except me and a few others, who now share a sacred bond, and a shared suffering.

1. Vampires Suck (dir. Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer)

Cheap, nasty and not as funny as just watching the Twilight movies it's supposed to be spoofing. Because it was cheap, it made its money back, meaning they're bound to turn out another lame spoof in 2011 despite their careers being thought dead before this latest atrocity. Because it was nasty, I'm appalled that they're going to be allowed to do it again. And because of all of the above, it's such a ringer for the title "Worst of 2010" that I'm almost tempted to disqualify it on the grounds of not being a film. I'm too angry for that, so let's put it up on this fridge of shit, where everyone can see it. FUCK THIS MOVIE.

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Tomorrow should bring the video special counting down my top 10 films of 2010, and we'll wrap up the New Year Bank Holiday weekend on Monday with a look forward to this year.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

GULLIVER'S TRAVELS- Review

It's as bad as it looks. And worse.

Huh.

Sometimes I just...

Right, let's start with story, shall we? Theoretically, the story of Gulliver's Travels, created by Jonathan Swift to subtly satirise government and politics so as to avoid being executed for his views, is a travelogue by Lemuel Gulliver. Gulliver is shipwrecked in a country where the inhabitants are 1/12 of his height, and variously travels to several other weird and wonderful places as the narrative progresses and Swift's critiques of the established order are embellished.

In Gulliver's Travels, a film from the makers of Shrek and Monsters vs. Aliens, the tale is modernised to centre around Jack Black as the now more implausibly named Lemuel Gulliver, an dislikeable bumbag who is never going to get out of the rut of employment he's nestled into at the New York Tribune. After resorting to shameless measures with the travel editor to bag a writing assignment in the Bermuda Triangle, Gulliver winds up shipwrecked in Lilliput. And that's where any manner of faithfulness to the text ends.

I'm only putting the gloves on for the advertising. To go into a rant about how it's stupidly over-exposed in trailers and adverts, like The A-Team before it, belies how apt the advertising actually was. It was crude, it looked terrible, and I for one wanted nothing more than for it to fuck off and die every time it assaulted my eyes and brain. That's pretty much how Gulliver's Travels, the movie, turns out. Some honest fellow in 20th Century Fox's marketing department deserves a quicker death than his cohorts in this enterprise. 

Gulliver's Travels is bad. And I mean, really bad. That salient point is the only way I can quickly get across my thoughts and feelings on this utter train-wreck of a motion picture. It is without wit, without irony, without innovation and without thought or feeling for anyone silly enough to pay cash money to see it. More notably however, it's without laughs. The kids in the screening I caught will testify to that. I'm not making this up- many of them laughed at the trailers before the film, for coming attractions like Gnomeo and Juliet and Yogi Bear, and at the Ice Age short that played before the main feature. For the entire duration of the main attraction, the whole cinema was deathly silent. You'll have more fun reading about Jonathan Swift's descent into madness on Wikipedia is than watching this film.

But what's wrong with it specifically? Well, simply put, it's Gulliver's Travels a la Dreamworks. I have been harsh on Dreamworks in the past, but I am speaking literally here- one of the screenwriters worked on the first two Shrek films and the director is Rob Letterman, who made a decent job of last year's Monsters vs. Aliens. But think of everything that comes with a bad Dreamworks film. Inane pop culture references, repurposed but no less blatant product placement, unfunny jokes that aim no higher than the shins of the lowest common denominator, and most annoyingly in this case, Jack Black.

As a rule, I generally like Jack Black, no matter how much of a pounding he took in my estimation after A Clockwork Orange style consumption of that Orange advert for this film before each and every one of the 40 films I've seen in the cinema since August. The trouble is, his repetitive schtick can get sort of irksome, especially when you cast him as a character as flagrantly abominable as this film's rendition of Gulliver. People say he plays himself, but I can't quite believe the image of Jack Black in films is anything close to the man himself. Because otherwise no one would be able to stand working with him.

Towering over the cast of Liliputians as he does, there's a fair argument to be made that Black is acting in a different film to them, added in afterwards through the magic of green screens. Supporting players like Billy Connolly and Jason Segel and Emily Blunt and Catherine Tate and... well, most of the little people are better than films like this. Only James Corden seems on the same wavelength as Black, with the consequence that you actually root for Chris O'Dowd as the film's villain as he calls out Gulliver's every action for the bullshit that it really is.

It's even more of a wasted opportunity when you consider that there are no prominent grown-up adaptations of Swift's novel, which contains more invention and intelligence than anyone bothered with on this version. Nothing about it shows an understanding of the potential of the source material. Too often, themes of corruption and war are glossed over by the need for apparently box-ticking sequences involving Jack Black playing Guitar Hero with little people, or pretending that Star Wars is the story of his life (and even that idea has been done elsewhere), or fighting a Transformer, or having a fucking song and dance number.

And so its lack of irony actually becomes something quite interesting. Look at that supporting cast again- they're all English, except for Jason Segel who makes a good stab at an English accent. Along with his rambunctious nature and ego issues, Black's Gulliver brings with him the worst parts of American culture. To get political for a moment in a vain effort to reclaim the original text's perspective, is it possible that with David Cameron installed in government with the aid of News International, Murdoch subsidiary 20th Century Fox sees Britain as an island of little people who gratefully take what we're spoon-fed via cultural imperialism? As a commentary on hegemony, it could be quite fascinating. However, it's supposed to be Night At The Museum, and it's actually a big pile of shite.

If this version of Gulliver's Travels hadn't been made, someone would have made it up as a joke. Indeed, I know many people who were initially confused by the Orange adverts for this film, believing it to be a joke trailer in the vein of the company's previous campaigns about Danny Glover's Dial Hard or Sean Astin's Lord of the Ringtones. The trouble is, it does exist, and it's hard to find anything funny about this film's existence. Gulliver's Travels is rotten- plain and simple. It is assembly line fodder of the most outright stupid kind, and nothing brings me more cheer at the end of 2010 than to see this film failing to make bank. Keep up the good work by staying at home, away from its awfulness, and 2011 will look a lot brighter.

Gulliver's Travels is now showing in 2D and 3D, at cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Gulliver's Travels, why not share your comments below? If you're wondering where this places on my bottom 10 list, rest assured it's on there- come back soon to find out what the other 9 are...

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Being Of Unsound Mind- LIFE AS WE KNOW IT Review

"WAAAAAAH." (attribute needed)

Katherine Heigl hasn't done herself any favours with her acting career. After lambasting the writers who made her a star with Knocked Up, she's gone on to become typecast in romcoms as an anal, shrewish single woman who's dependent on finding a man for happiness. Guess what? Life as We Know It is another Heigl film about an anal, shrewish single woman, the dickhead with whom she's forced into an uneasy emotional entente, and her insane late friends.

We meet Holly and Masser on a disastrous first date- there's no way in a million years that they should ever be together, but they're in a romantic comedy, so I guess we'll see how that pans out. Their only real connection to one another is that they're mutually friends with blissful new parents Peter and Alison, who die in a car accident and orphan their one-year-old daughter Sophie. Funny, right? Well, the wacky part is this- they bequeathed the custody of Sophie to their two hateful buddies, together. Uh ohhhh!

The plot is a matter of absurd, nay, perverse contrivance. It's duly noted that the death of both parents was an unlikely event, but if you bother to make a will that could control the fate of your only begotten child, do you really choose two people who hate each other, to say nothing of their utter lack of parenting skills or their constant surprise at the smell of baby shit? Hell, I'd say Peter and Alison tempted fate, and fate gives them the horns around half an hour in by way of traffic smiting. What follows thereafter is an hour and a half of Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel being astonished by nappies and bickering.

If it doesn't sound like a recipe for hilarity, that's because it's not. It's the most cloying and tenuous film I've seen since Remember Me, and it's oddly selfish in the way it goes about it too. You'd think that it would be very selfless of two grieving acquaintances to accept responsibility over a child's upbringing in real life, but not in this film. Mostly because neither of our romantic leads can shut the hell up about how this has affected them. If we had one of them dutifully committing to put the child first and the other being selfish to the point of an inevitable epiphany, it might have been watchable. But no, all Heigl and Duhamel can muster is bickering dialogue and self-important claptrap.

It's an important realisation when you can see Heigl turning people on screen with her into the same empty character she's been recycling for the last four films or so. Josh Duhamel, that army guy from Transformers, seems like a pretty open and charismatic screen presence elsewhere, but as Masser, he's as repressed as Heigl's Holly. This is one of those films where no one is savvy to anything recognisable as human behaviour, keeping back simple admissions for the sake of building to one of a million weak punchlines. Sarah Burns' somewhat overplayed social worker becomes one of the few bright spots when she points out that they're being cagey for nothing- their troubles are nothing compared to the "tranny hookers" she normally supervises.

There's maybe one reason why parents would hand their child over to these two- because they'd make a good looking couple. Not a good couple, just an ostensibly pretty one. This in contrast to the stereotypical neighbours we see here, and that's another place where the film just alienated me completely- it's trying to win us over with gags about gay adoption, overbearing matriarchs and in one throwaway instance, bipolar disorder. None of those gags hit the mark, and nor does anything else the screenwriters throw at us- the film is just singularly unfunny, unaccomplished and unworthy.

Life As We Know It might as well take place on another planet, except for how it keeps its head firmly buried in the romantic comedy play-book. The only real difference, aside from the unorthodox and ornery premise, is how long it takes to get there. This has the bizarre effect of making a mawkish movie feel sterile all the same. We get the Other Guy, and the Wacky Best Friend, and the Dash To The Fucking Airport, but over a tortuous two hours. At least Heigl's other 2010 outing, Killers, was reasonably short. As for this, it's life, Jim, but definitely not as we know it.

Life as We Know It is now showing in selected cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Life as We Know It, why not share your comments below? If you think I've been harsh on this, it's because I'm crying on the inside. You can cheer me up by befriending Christina Hendricks. Just tell her that she and I have to be together, then die suddenly. Surely this logic cannot fail.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

The Quickening- VAMPIRES SUCK

UPDATE: You can read my more discursive and rational review of this film on Den of Geek.

Masters of un-funny Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg set their sights on Twilight with Vampires Suck, their latest so-called comedy. Becca Crane moves to the sleepy town of Sporks and finds herself torn between two men- sparkling vampire Edward, whose commitment issues stem from his bloodsucking family trying to eat his prospective girlfriends, and his dogged rival for her affections, Jacob. Hilarity ensues on a rollercoaster through pop-culture and teenage vampire relationships.

Oh, I should probably mention at this point in the review that Vampires Suck is utter dog shit. Surprise!

In all honesty, there's a more full review that I wrote for Den of Geek coming online in the next few days. I'll link to that review then, because there's no different way to phrase how crap this film is. Here are some pictures, with a brief explanation of my position. It's a piss-take of this...

... from the guys who gave you this...

... and this...

... and it looks like this.

Does any of that look or sound appealing to you? It's the film that finally made me abandon my work ethic with reviews and go for picture-based lols over actual analysis and opinion. Why? Because they didn't bother to make any effort making this distended YouTube video that's somehow making it into cinemas come Friday. Why the Mormon-bashing fuck would I bother to write a thousand words telling you why it's comfortably the worst film of 2010? It's such a ringer for that position that it's not even worth the cyberspace this post is taking up. Friedberg and Seltzer have somehow made a spoof that's less funny than actually watching Twilight or New Moon. Jings!

It's a film that almost defies reasonable analysis, like monkeys throwing their faeces at psychologists trying to find Rorschach patterns in the splatter. Once again, for the cheap seats, DO NOT GO AND SEE VAMPIRES SUCK. For the love of sweet Buddy Christ, enough is enough. If you do see Vampires Suck, don't bother coming and telling me, because this is what you'll get...

2007- I just saw Epic Movie. Yes, that is blood.

For Den of Geek, I'll force myself to be reasonable. For my own blog, where I'm allowed to vent about shit that made me physically sick, this is what you get. Fuck this movie.

Vampires Suck is infecting cinemas from Friday. Don't you dare go and see it.

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If you've seen Vampires Suck, I refer you to the previous graphic. Don't worry- tomorrow we'll have a totally rational review of one of the five best films of 2010 so far. I just need to calm down.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Insert Gag Here- TAKERS Review

Getting to number one at the US box office isn't always a badge of honour. Making the top spot in the dying days of August, heist flick Takers isn't likely to have left an impression on many. I'd forgive you for having seen it on release and forgotten about it already, cos I'm having to strain to remember it from yesterday.

As far as I can surmise, the film is about a crew of professional bank robbers whose meticulous planning and scheduling is thrown into the disarray by the return of an old member of the gang. Ghost has just been released from prison after being caught on the job and left behind by his friends, and he comes to the gang with a heist plan, but can they trust him? Well, what do you think?

Even putting aside how predictable the "Curse your sudden, yet inevitable betrayal!" moment is, and how formulaic the story is, Takers is just bad. Not one of those films that I'd say is without redeeming features, but good golly, I still wish I hadn't bothered with it. The tail wags the dog to such an extent that the entire film spasms at the behest of heist movie conventions. Nothing of any real importance unfolds, and all of it seems to unfold only because the filmmakers have gleaned that it should from other films, not because they know the story they're telling.

That's never more apparent than with the central dichotomy. We open on Matt Dillon's jaded and underpaid detective, and his partner, played by Jay Hernanadez. We sporadically return to them, and yet the main characters are, apparently, the unappealing douchebags for whom the film is named. That's Takers, as in "of the piss". What's annoying is that while Dillon is hardly on top form, I'd much rather have seen the film about his character than the one about this sub-Hustle gang.

Let's allow for the fact that two of the stars are singers, not actors- Tip 'T.I' Harris and Chris Brown. Harris also produced the film and Brown is seemingly there as a combination of a known "name" musician and a parkour expert. That said, what Takers offers as parkour looks more like You've Been Framed- Brown knocking over everyone in the crowded street that he can in a scene where he runs from the cops- and in my boredom, I actually started awarding him points for every startled woman he wiped the fuck out during his escape.

But then there are the so-called real actors. Paul Walker and Hayden Christensen actually make perfect bank robbers, because their faces are so blank and non-descript that neither of them would ever require to disguise themselves to take up a life of crime. Recognising that it might be difficult to tell them apart, and in the absence of any personality where Christensen is concerned, the former Anakin is embellished with a pork-pie hat that's too small for his noggin, which gave me much needed levity all the way through at just how stupid he looked. Oh, and he still can't act for toffee, but does that surprise anyone?

With The Town still playing in cinemas, Ben Affleck is serving up a meaty and entertaining heist movie, so I don't know why you'd go to the soup kitchen instead, for this vacuous non-event of a film. It has lofty aspirations, but it definitely ain't Heat. Ever wondered how shit would Heat have been with rappers and shit actors sitting in for Al Pacino and Robert De Niro? It would have been precisely this shit with tiny hats, funny parkour, Genghis Khan quoting and all. Director John Luessenhop has none of Michael Mann's finesse, and instead he trots through cliche after cliche.

The result makes Takers little more than a prolapsed music video, dragged out to 107 minutes and packed with every heist movie trope in the book. The experienced actors are there to make Harris and Brown look better by comparison, and only Dillon crawls out of the hubris without a scratch on his credibility. Paul Walker and Hayden Christensen somehow manage to look even worse than usual. Presumably Zoe Saldana's extended cameo in here was pre-Avatar, because goodness knows she's better than this colour-graded daylight robbery. Don't let it waste your time.

Takers is still showing at selected cinemas nationwide. I'm amazed it made it past the first week- I never would have seen it otherwise.
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If you've seen Takers, why not share your comments below? This film does hold the distinction of having the worst Photoshop job ever performed on a film poster. No, that really is the real poster. Kind of representative too- it's a slipshod mash-up of shit actors and colour grading. Bloody poster is doing my job for me.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

The Horse With No Name- JONAH HEX Review

Here's what plot remains in the studio hack-job that is Jonah Hex- the eponymous Hex is a Confederate soldier turned bounty hunter who can commune with the dead after being left for dead himself by his radicalised comrades. Then the man who killed his wife and child, Quentin Turnbull, re-announces himself after faking his demise, on the eve of a plot to destroy the United States of America, and he sets out for revenge.

You all surely know how big a deal it is when Clint Eastwood directs a Western. He was the iconic Man With No Name in the Dollars trilogy, and behind the camera, he's been responsible for greats like High Plains Drifter and Unforgiven. In Jonah Hex, we have a film I believe to have been made by the Horse With No Name.

That, to me, is the only rational explanation. Whoever put together the film as we see it in cinemas obviously had some ostensible understanding of the genre, and of the DC Comics source material, but no understanding whatsoever of human communication, or of what entertains or appeals to audiences. So why not a particularly experienced equine actor? This seems like the film you'd make if you wanted to get away from being sat on by Clint Eastwood.

The credited director is former Pixar animator Jimmy Hayward, and the screenplay is attributed to Crank creators Neveldine/Taylor. The pair were tagged to direct until they departed due to “creative differences”, and the sheer amount of studio mandated reshoots and schedule changes makes authorship a moot point with this. The horse is merely my scapegoat, as it behooves us to disassociate Pixar from the drop-dead worst film of 2010 so far.

Neveldine/Taylor don't escape blame though- the script, even though the scenes have clearly all been muddled up, is terrible. The plot centres around the dumbest kind of historical allegory involving an anachronistic WMD and the sight of bandits wrapped in dynamite stepping in for suicide bombers. The dialogue is awful too- at one point, we have John Malkovich delivering the line “We will show them that we will do that which we have most assuredly come here to do.” In a terrible Southern accent.

There is no way I'm going easy on this just because the studio went to town on the final cut. There's already enough wrong with it that I'm sceptical this mess of footage was ever salvageable. It feels too long. Even with the whole origin story largely condensed into a poorly rendered motion comic in the first five minutes, it feels too long. Even though it's not asking anything of its audience, it feels too long. Even though it's 81 minutes long, including nine minutes of credits, it feels too fucking long.

Oh, but here's the one really positive thing to come out of Jonah Hex- it feels so long that you'll be checking your watch. And when you check, you'll notice the big hand pass over Megan Fox's 15th minute of fame, spent playing Lila the hooker in this piece of trash. Even for her, it's a thankless role, and without the adolescent goodwill garnered by her semi-annual Transformers appearances, her career's going nowhere but down from here.

I already mentioned Malkovich, but the rest of the cast don't really acquit themselves either. Josh Brolin is fine and craggy as Hex, but he really doesn't have enough to work with to make any kind of impression. I found Michael Fassbender's fleeting appearance more memorable, but that's because he's an actor who makes the most of every role, good or bad, and also because, unlike Brolin, he wasn't unintelligible due to facial prosthetics.

Watching Jonah Hex, I found it really all too easy to imagine a horse demolishing an editing suite, his hooves destroying a keyboard as he tries to edit a love scene between Hex and Lila. He knows what he wants to evoke. He wants to signify why we should care about these characters, and why their relationship is worth a damn. Ultimately, we shouldn't and it isn't. And he's too witless, too unfocused and too utterly inept to make even a tenth of an enjoyable film out of this hash of an adaptation.

The comic has its fans, who've naturally renounced this film version, so there's no blaming the source material. Besides, we know from the example of High Plains Drifter and others that a supernatural film that deploys the codes and conventions of a Western could be awesome. What we get here is a worse version of Wild Wild West. Jonah Hex is not merely bad. It's “I really think a horse might have directed this film” bad.

Jonah Hex is now playing in select cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Jonah Hex, why not leave a comment on the film and/or my review? If you were hoping for a review of The Last Exorcism, come back on Wednesday- I wanted a repeat viewing today before I gave my review. In a nutshell though, go see that film instead of this one.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

Avatarded- THE LAST AIRBENDER Review

As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.
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In The Last Airbender, a war that has raged on for a century puts a mystical world at the mercy of a powerful Fire Nation. Certain peoples of the world have a telekinetic relationship with the elements, and the Avatar, the only one who can control all four- Air, Water, Earth and Fire- has long since vanished. His return in the form of a young boy called Aang threatens the supremacy of the firebenders, as it is this young airbender's destiny to restore balance and end the war.

I watched the first season of Avatar- The Last Airbender, the storyline of which is covered by this film adaptation, over the last two weeks. I'm not going to deploy comparisons too much except where it fits my argument, because I've always said that adaptations should be assessed on their own merits rather than how they measure up to the source material. In any case, to say where they deviated from the unspeakably excellent animated series is to only scratch the surface of what is wrong with this version of the story.

For one thing, it's an exercise in world-building rather than story development. The reason why fans of the series are fans of the series is because its creators, Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko, managed to do both. Instead, this film is pre-occupied with building the story into a potential trilogy on the scale of The Lord of the Rings. To that end, cinematographer Andrew Lesnie does some fantastically good looking work, but at least the thrill of seeing Middle Earth come to life was complemented by Peter Jackson's direction and script.

Here, Lesnie's working at the behest of M. Night Shyamalan, who is entirely wrong for the material. Yes, I'm busting out the "wrong for the material" label because Shyamalan's talent and capabilities have now finally disintegrated before the filmgoing audience's eyes. Can we now accept as a cinematic axiom that he only makes good films if Bruce Willis features in them? And those two films he made with Willis are so very good that it just makes the sheer ineptitude of The Last Airbender hurt even more.

He told Empire Magazine around the time Unbreakable was being released that he had unlocked some great secret of filmmaking that only he, Stanley Kubrick, Alfred Hitchcock and Steven Spielberg were privy to. If you didn't think he was talking out of his arse then, you certainly will by the end of this film. While the visuals are fine and occasionally great, the film is swamped by the same interminable dialogue from The Happening and the same hokey acting that has plagued Shyamalan's downward descent. The best I can say as far as he's concerned is that he at least refrained from acting in this one, and from making a twist ending beyond the clumsy sequel hook.

The main thing that will bug everyone about the film, whether you're Avatar-literate or not, is how didactic it is. Heavy amounts of dialogue are dedicated to explaining the plot, and more annoyingly, recapping what's just happened. Narration is clumsily delivered throughout by Aang's friend Katara, lazily explaining stuff that even the younger audience is clever enough to figure out if they'd only represented it visually. Other characters, especially the villains, exposit with the exact same diction and delivery as Charles Muntz's dogs in Up. Film is a visual medium! I haven't made a single feature film and I know that! Why doesn't Shyamalan know that after making nine films?!

The actors they've got to deliver the dialogue aren't a lot better. Almost the entire cast are Narm artists. Jackson Rathbone is notably awful as Sokka, a character who is supposed to be a well-developed if comic relief-friendly sidekick in the mould of Ron Weasley but pans out as a non-entity, and Aasif Mandvi is by far the worst as Commander Zhao. For those who aren't familiar with Mandvi's role on The Daily Show over the pond, his presence here is the equivalent of casting Ian Hislop or Russell Howard as a straight-faced antagonist. Having seen Zhao, you'd be hard-pressed to remember a villain more fruity than him, especially one played by an actor so willing to milk the awful dialogue with ludicrous pauses and drawn-out syllables.

Dev Patel is the only one who escapes this mess unscathed, making a pretty decent turn as the disgraced Fire Lord prince, Zuko. His portrayal is the closest to that in the series, and he's about the only character you can latch onto. The only problem with this is that he's a villain, and we spend more time with villains standing around telling each other things they already know than we do with our three heroes. To understand how big a problem this is with a more widely seen example, it'd be like a Harry Potter film where you saw more of Voldemort and Draco Malfoy than Harry, Ron and Hermione. Katara and Sokka, the Hermione and Ron in this equation, suffer the most.

And more than that, the villains come from the gloriously inept world-dominating model of the Empire in Star Wars. Sure, we see powerful badasses at the head of the enterprise, but their will is enforced by a bunch of utter nincompoops. In the series, firebenders could generate fire by themselves and then manipulate it, making it a deadly fighting technique that you could believe would bring a world to its knees. Here, they need an external fire to manipulate. When your enemies can control water, air and earth, all of which are plausible extinguishers to any fire you don't materialise yourself, you have enforcers who are inferior even to the Stormtroopers. They're more on a par with the stupid comic relief droids in the prequel trilogy, especially seeing how goofy their fighting style is.

I'm only now comparing to the animated season this is based on because these are fundamental issues with how the story is translated. The most part of the film is the climax, based around the three-part season finale, but in animated form, this had followed an entire season of character and story development. In the case of a film, and this film in particular, it just follows because that's how the formula goes. As adaptation goes, this is the way you would make a film based on the series if you were drunk. That would also explain why so much is repeated, almost as if Shyamalan had forgotten the parts he'd already explained as he slurred his way through the story.

What's annoyed some fans in particular though is the pronunciation of Aang as "Aung", but that's actually quite fitting. "Aung" is a noise I would make if I were hit in the face, and The Last Airbender amounts to 103 minutes of M. Night Shyamalan hitting fans of the series in the face with a film that I fear will forever make this story a laughing stock in the broader public consciousness.

Shyamalan has taken a beloved, colourful and witty animated series and manipulated it into the most stingy, lifeless and poorly assembled film of the year. In the time you'll spend thinking about how bad this was after seeing it, you could have watched 20 episodes of the animated equivalent, so do that. Go and watch the first season of Avatar- The Last Airbender, because this film has done it a great injustice. I implore you not to go and see The Last Airbender, lest Shyamalan be allowed to get his poobending mitts on the story once more. And if there were any justice, this would at least be the surprise twist ending to his career. 

The Last Airbender is screening in advance in 2D and 3D at selected cinemas nationwide, and opens everywhere else tomorrow.
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If you must see The Last Airbender, why not leave a comment on the film and/or my review? I strongly advise against seeing it though, even for the LOLs- if you have to know, here's the biggest LOL to be had.

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch. 

Wrongoloids

As something of a regular disclaimer, it's only my opinion here- others are available. As ever, mild spoilers may occur in the process of reviewing, but never so far as to spoil any major plot developments.

Who knew a comedy about suicide bombers could actually be sweet and rather poignant? Some still don't know it, hence the usual brigade out to slap about Four Lions for being morally reprehensible in the like. Of course they've completely overlooked the latest Michael Bay mandated remake monstrosity A Nightmare on Elm Street in the process. Have no fear (not a likely proposition in the latter), I will be covering both.
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So, there's a remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street. You know the story, or at least what remains of it here- some teens have the same dreams as each other, and dying in dreams means dying in reality. Worse luck for them, as a vengeful gribbly called Freddy Krueger is out and about. There's an effort to install some new plot twists here, from the fairly interesting idea of micro-naps brought on by intense sleep deprivation, to the heinous twist on Freddie's origins that makes for yet another cynically stupid horror remake with Michael Bay's production company Platinum Dunes footing the bill.

This is the first feature film by music video director Samuel Bayer, a name which in this context sounds like a pseudonym for the cinematic Voldemort himself, but I'm assured he only produced it. So Bayer had this to say after his film got the moderately successful US opening weekend he needed to carry on in the business.

"Look, I’m gonna catch a lot of heat for this, but some of these fans on the web should just get up, stretch, breathe, go outside and get some fresh air, maybe get a girlfriend and just get a life. They should see the movie and make up their own minds.”

Essentially, he says fuck you very much for paying to see my shit movie. OK, so pre-release, the film wasn't exactly endearing itself to me, and even though I eventually saw it without paying, I realised I should actually see it because he made one good point. People should be able to make up their own minds.

One scene in this sums up my reaction- remember the quicksand stairs from the 1984 Wes Craven original? That scene is replicated on a landing here, which gives the effect of our miserable young heroine wading through shit. That scene is the distilled essence of 2010's A Nightmare on Elm Street, for two key reasons.

1. It's part of a greatest hits package of the original film, replicating memorable scenes with a massively dulled effect.
2. Watching the film is like wading through shit.

It is not only unspeakably awful, but it's boring too. It actually lends itself to awful rhetoric from critics, because it's so easy to feel sleepy while watching it. Guessing that's why they changed the tagline from "Don't Fall Asleep" to "Never Sleep Again" fairly late in the marketing campaign. Not that it heightens the terror even one jot, it's just incredibly boring. The sound design is as ever catered towards a quick jump scare, but still serves as an alarm clock for anyone who's drifting off from the sheer dullness of the proceedings.

Take a moment's silence for Jackie Earle Haley, who really deserved better than this. He's a good choice to play Freddy and he's clearly a fan of the character, but he has nothing to do here. And worse, he has to deal with the terrible swap-out they do on Freddy's origins. Apparently a child murderer wasn't bad enough, so they make him a paedophile instead, something that Haley is forced to trot out by leering over our growed-up lead emos before he eviscerates them. With last year's Friday the 13th, that's two horror remakes in a row from the Arch Bay-stard that have distilled any threat and menace in a monster down to sex. So sex is sexy. Monsters are not. Are you scared yet?


Were it not my duty to entertain in some way as I expect you to read through all this, I could sum up this remake succinctly. A Nightmare on Elm Street is bad. I don't hold the original up as the untouchable horror classic that others have, but this is really just eye-wateringly and arse-clenchingly bad. You could expect no more or less from Platinum Dunes, but Bayer takes an immutably scary idea in the form of Freddy Krueger and rehashes it without innovation or even any real horror. The script operates in syllogism and the acting is, with Jackie Earle Haley excepted, fucking awful. You will not care for these characters, you care only for when this 90 minute shitfest will stop dragging and you can go and watch something else instead.

A Nightmare on Elm Street is now playing in cinemas nationwide.


Altogether less damaging and more wholesome is Four Lions, which comes into selected cinemas after a troubled journey. Writer and director Chris Morris well-known for courting controversy through the really quite brilliant Channel 4 series Brass Eye, and thus it's taken a while to get the funding for this one. It's all about a motley crew of suicide bombers, determined to make an indelible mark on a culture that they despise. Or at least two of them are, the other two being slightly less aware of what they're letting themselves in for. With division in the ranks, they look for a target that will put them down in history on their way to the Rubber Dinghy Rapids they expect in paradise.

I don't really think this film is wrong or bad, obviously. Come on, it's a film where the key conflict in the film occurs over a Facebook application starring animated puffins. It was never going to do any real damage. Thus the anticipated harsh reaction from the British Muslim community doesn't seem to have materialised.

Instead, there have been calls to ban the film from the families of 7/7 victims. Understandably, a film that makes this topic funny will be a sore point, but with deepest sympathies, the solution is just not to watch it if it may be upsetting. For anyone else, there's actually a rather bittersweet undercurrent to the satire, but Morris never shies away from making some incisive gags about extremism.


Our leonine quartet are too stupid to actually orchestrate the large scale panic they misguidedly hope for, making the film somewhat poignant. These four are still real people- two of whom haven't quite grasped that the end result of their mission will involve their deaths and another of whom has a loving family. If you were made to root for terrorists, it'd be obscene, but Morris quite delicately sends up one of the most terrible facts of modern religion without ever mocking human tragedy.

Mel Brooks once said that he mocked Hitler in The Producers because fear loses its power if you're able to laugh at it. While Morris hasn't gone down that road, he actually goes some way towards a character study of suicide bombers rather than an outright farce. It does err closer to farce than to the satire of Morris' earlier works, and at times that's jarring with the more human element. Our anti-heroes are not traditional caricatures.

I wouldn't say it's not the kind of comedy you laugh at, because there are a lot of fantastic jokes in Four Lions. It was just altogether different from the film I expected, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's obviously been meticulously researched and I don't believe there's anything malicious about it at all. Morris fans may be surprised, but there's still much to admire about this uproarious yet tactful comedy.

Four Lions is now playing in selected cinemas- seek it out!
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If you have seen A Nightmare on Elm Street and Four Lions and want to comment on the films or my reviews, or simply need help with your strong urge to strap a bomb to yourself and find the Platinum Dunes HQ, why not comment below?

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.