WINNIE THE POOH- Review

What's the measure of a film? In recent years, we've seen Ridley Scott's Robin Hood, Roland Emmerich's 2012 and some arsehole's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen over-run by a vast margin, and given how bored I was by each of them, it would be difficult to say that I felt I got my money's worth from those lengthy films. So it's baffling to see the negative reviews of Winnie the Pooh, which runs to 54 minutes long.

Not that the short length of the main feature is the only criticism that certain grumpy bastards are levelling at this return to the Hundred Acre Wood, but it's a criticism that is paradoxical. Winnie the Pooh is not hugely story-driven, nor has it ever been. Indeed, the Disney features usually consist of episodes, which in this case include Eeyore losing his tail and Pooh Bear being unable to get some eats no matter what he tries. And it's pretty much a perfectly pitched film.

It's not a film that invites paragraphs upon paragraphs of deep analysis, but the response to the length seems worth mentioning. At 54 minutes, the film doesn't outstay its welcome- brevity is the soul of wit, and I find myself wishing that other kids' films would be as concise. Take Rio- a film I like, but one which has 20 minutes in the middle where an army of capuchin monkeys come and go, seemingly to bulk out the running time to 95 minutes.

Winnie the Pooh isn't filling a 90 minute quota which, if we're honest, people use less as a barometer of a satisfying length for family films and more as the optimum amount of time to distract their kids. Perhaps it explains Disney's lack of marketing for what's easily going to be the most satisfying film they release this year. There's no false economy in a programme that lasts 73 minutes overall, and it's a weird attitude to have. And even if your tastes are more grown up, this film's certainly more worthy of your money than Your Highness (102 minutes) or Red Riding Hood (100 minutes).

As to the film itself, it's beautifully rendered in the storybook fashion of the older Disney animations, and it either brings back or emulates all of the original vocal performances. In a weird way then, it compares to Scream 4, seeing as how it updates what we know rather than rebooting. Imagine a reboot that was a live action and CG-hybrid, in the vein of that bloody Smurfs movie that's coming out. Wisely, Disney opted for the nostalgic route, with a film that took me back to my childhood like no other in recent memory.

The characters are there as you know and love them. The gloomy and depressed Eeyore comes to the fore on account of his missing tail and Pooh roams from house to house, bugging his friends for honey so he can get a fix and at various points demonstrating his serious addiction issues. Jings, this is sounding like a Mike Leigh film- told you it doesn't invite deep analysis. It's just lovely, really. Older critics have taken issue with the usual divergence from the source material, but personally, I grew up with the cartoons, not the book.

There's no condescending to the material on my part here- Winnie the Pooh is an outright good film. I can't hope to sway more mature audiences to buy tickets if they don't have kids or young relatives, but hell, it looks good and it's the only film in a long time to put a big smile on my face from start to finish. It's good humoured, it's not ticking the same old boxes as every other CG-animation out there, and it's a real nostalgic treat.

Winnie the Pooh is now playing in cinemas nationwide.

Just as Jake and the Neverland Pirates and The Ballad of Nessie bulk out the programme, my brief reviews will bulk out this short review. The Ballad of Nessie, centring around the Loch Ness Monster after she's turfed out of her original home by developers and featuring the vocals of Billy Connolly, is a perfect appetiser for the main attraction.

Poetic and lovely stuff, which, by contrast, Jake and the Neverland Pirates really isn't. Apparently a teaser for a Disney Channel show based around Disney's rendition of Peter Pan, it sells a show that's gonna be unimaginative and just generally cheesy. A damning indictment for an animation aimed at 4 year olds? Yes, because it was followed by TWO perfectly enjoyable animations aimed at 4 year olds...

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

RIO- Review

Can we change the name of Orange's "Gold Spot", in which a 20th Century Fox film gets some rampant phone-related plugging for about six months at a time before every single film in the multiplex? Thus far, we've had The A-Team and Gulliver's Travels there, so I was lobbying for the "Brown Spot". However, as annoying as the ads for Rio have been before every single film, it turns out they just indicate how shit Orange are at making cinema ads nowadays. Where did Mr. Dresden go anyhoo?

The film itself follows Blu, a rare blue macaw who lives in Minnesota with his owner Linda. It turns out he's so rare that he's actually the last male of his species, and he must go to sweltering Rio de Janeiro to mate with Jewel, the last female blue macaw. Unfortunately, the two birds barely even get on with one another, much less wanting to actually get it on, even to save their species.

This is a plot that was apparently central in last year's Alpha and Omega, but more prominently, Pixar were developing an almost identical film in Newt, which got cancelled last year. So Orange has been trailering the film for what feels like years, and it's also usurped whatever the genius minds at Pixar were getting up to. That was more than enough to lower my expectations to subterranean levels, so it's pleasing that Rio actually turned out to be quite entertaining.

Contrary to the poorly dubbed Gold Spot ads, there's some good voice acting to be had, which is always a good start for a CG animation. Jesse Eisenberg and Anne Hathaway effectively do Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in their vocal roles as Blu and Jewel. Eisenberg reprises his pre-Social Network nervy schtick rather than his cold and superior Mark Zuckerburg, but it's Hathaway who manages better with the musical numbers.

Yep, musical numbers. Happily, they're not like Dreamworks musical numbers, that just deploy whatever song is cleared for the soundtrack, but actually a fair few original numbers mixed in amongst the obligatory covers. The highlight is the great villain song, performed by Jemaine Clement's rather brilliantly voiced villain, a psychotic cockatoo called Nigel. As a fan of good villain songs, it worked for me as both a parody and an iteration of the old trope.

The story itself is not revolutionary, falling somewhere between the Buzz subplot in Toy Story and the relocation gubbins in Madagascar, but then what can you expect from a story that was independently thunk up by three different animation companies? I can tell you though it's sweetly executed though, with amusing characters and enjoyable visuals.

The cartoonish vistas of Blue Sky's Ice Age movies give way to slightly more realistic-looking forestry here, but there's still room for big colourful backdrops and nicely designed characters. That said, two lazily characterised supporting characters, voiced by Jamie Foxx and will.i.am, really grated on me, and there's a weird bit in the middle where we briefly get an army of Capuchin monkeys for reasons that don't particularly serve the plot. It's like the film lost all self-confidence for about 20 minutes and said "Hey, monkeys are funny, right?"

Let's always remember that studios compile trailers and marketing, not the filmmakers, and there are often films that are a lot better than their trailers would suggest. Rio is one of those films where all the stuff that looks bad about the trailer is, at the very least, more bearable when seen in context. It's no masterpiece, but it's colourful, it's vibrant, and it's simple, accessible animation, just in time for the Easter holidays.

Rio is now showing in 2D and 3D at cinemas nationwide.
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I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

RANGO- Review

After three Pirates of the Caribbean films, you could be forgiven for feeling all Gore Verbinski-ed out. It's the surreal tendences of At World's End, which were totally out of place in that film, that the director leans towards with much greater success in his new animated spaghetti Western, Rango. He reunites with Johnny Depp to do... well, something strange.

Our hero is a domesticated chameleon who spends most of his time acting out melodramas in his tank, and winds up lost in the Mojave desert. He then sets off across the desert and finds himself in a town full of critters, called Dirt, which is suffering from a water shortage. The chameleon then adopts the name Rango and ingratiates himself as the sheriff of Dirt, little realising that anyone calling himself sheriff in this town can't be long for this world...

Verbinski has gone as far from the high seas as it's possible to get, and in the process, created his best film since The Curse of the Black Pearl. He can't take all the credit, because Rango is the union of many different fantastical collaborators. For starters, it's the first animated film by the special effects wizards at Industrial Light and Magic, scored by Hans Zimmer, and shot by Roger Deakins. I shit you not- Roger Deakins is the DP on that Nickelodeon lizard film you've been seeing adverts for all over the place.

I suppose this is the trade-off, for a studio like Paramount to greenlight something as unfriendly and weird as this film. They're marketing it the only way they can, because if the screaming and frightened young kids in the screening I saw are any indicator, word of mouth is going to kill this film amongst the family audience. Pay heed to the PG certificate, because this is absolutely not a film for very young children. Although I can imagine kids over 8 years old enjoying it is absolutely a film that can only be completely appreciated by an older audience.

I'm aware of the elephant in the room, so I'm going to address it directly- Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox still sucks, in my opinion. Yes, it's another film that pitches above the heads of the young audience, but the essential difference is that it's not based upon beloved source material from an author who does have a younger target audience. Roald Dahl might not have been afraid to create ugly characters to entertain children, but this film is something else. This is a film that features a toad with tits, and the character design is just as unique for every other misshapen critter we see.

In contrast to the ugliness of the characters, the animation itself is astonishingly good. It's all the better for not being a 3D presentation, and it seems bewildering to think that ILM have never come out with an animated film before now, when this one looks so good. The crown jewel is a glorious action setpiece set to a strigiform mariachi band's rendition of Ride of the Valkyries- without exaggeration or rhetoric, I can honestly say my jaw dropped. And happily, it's not merely the visuals that are jaw-dropping.

Around 10 minutes in, you get a hint of what you're in for with an astonishing non-sequitur that references one of Johnny Depp's most iconic roles. Even braver, the thrust of the narrative is a homage to Chinatown, with the ongoing intrigue over the water shortage in Dirt. But on the whole, it's a spaghetti Western, and it's influenced by Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah while equally sticking with Verbinski's own vision.

It doesn't always pay off- Depp playing a dork works much better in animation than it did in The Tourist, but it's a slippery performance nonetheless, and Verbinski isn't known for reining Depp in during their collaborations on the Pirates films. Also, let's not forget that the main character arc essentially mirrors that of Gulliver's Travels and many other kids movies like it- the protagonist pretends to be something he's not, but learns something about himself in the process. Yawn. For the most part though, it's such a unique and unexpected joy that I was swept up in it for the duration.

Rango is so different that it astonishes me to know it even exists under a studio banner. Paramount might have played a little dirty in marketing the film for younger kids, who have surely been confused and frightened by this film all weekend, but the film plays dirty too. It's a film that takes risks despite sticking with the established tropes of its genre, representing characters who are distinctively un-cute and ramping up the death toll to levels that would even have Pixar tearing their hair out. It's certainly a strange little curiosity, but this perverted cheese-dream will hopefully find an audience as appreciative as I was.

Rango is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
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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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I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

GNOMEO & JULIET- Review

As high concepts go, a retelling of a Shakespearean tragedy with garden ornaments is going to take the gold for this week's new releases. Still, with the next big 3D pop star pet project coming next week, I'd estimate that Elton John has done far better for his involvement in Gnomeo & Juliet than that fucking Bieber monster thing will do with his premature biopic.

The story, for the uninitiated, involves the romance of two starstruck lovers- in this case, the intrepid blue-hatted Gnomeo and the curious red-hatted Juliet, who live in adjoining gardens owned by a Mrs. Capulet and a Mr. Montague respectively. The two neighbours quarrel, and so the gnomes and ornaments in each garden follow suit, feuding over who has the best garden and indulging in the occasional high-speed lawnmower race. As a narrator gnome establishes in the opening scene, "this is a story that has been told before, many times, and we're going to tell it again, but different."

All of my problems with Dreamworks Animation lie within their inconsistency. The pop culture references could be a lot more bearable if focused on a recurring theme, as with the medieval branding in Shrek 2. Their soundtracks, usually sourced from wildly eclectic but still recognisable songs, might sell CDs but doesn't suit the tone of the movie. This is why Dreamworks' only truly good films since the first Shrek are How to Train Your Dragon and Kung Fu Panda. In Gnomeo & Juliet, we have a no-brand animated film that keeps consistency in both its musical choices and its irreverent referencing, while carrying right on with being absolutely crackers.

In terms of the soundtrack, executive producer Elton John's back-catalogue accompanies much of the action, and yet doesn't stretch the film to the Herculean efforts of synchronising music as seen in Mamma Mia! and the like. And the visual references are largely Shakespearean, culminating in a fourth wall-crawling setpiece where the relative merits of a tragic ending are discussed in advance of this adaptation's ending. In the case of the references, it's the first indicator that the film is something more than I could have reasonably expected.

It's no masterpiece, and it's certainly not above borrowing certain story beats from other, more popular animated films. Most flagrantly, an apparently emotional sequence midway through the film has diminished impact when you remember a very similar and more memorable sequence from Toy Story 2. Also from Toy Story, we get the idea that these characters are inanimate objects that come to life.

That makes them very breakable, and this imbues the entire film with a bizarre sense of jeopardy that's lacking in certain other animated family films. You may assume that this won't end in the same way as the source material, but a niggling doubt may manifest itself as the film goes on. It's presumably this eccentricity, uniquely British, that attracted the starry cast of British talent. While James McAvoy and Emily Blunt are competent but fairly interchangeable with other bright young stars, there's some nice work from Michael Caine, Matt Lucas and Ashley Jensen. Oh, and Jason Statham playing a gnome is everything I ever hoped it would be.

Gnomeo & Juliet wound up being a lot more fun than I had expected- a cheerful little curiosity with more invention and imagination than you'd know from just glancing at it. I'm sure it will be overshadowed by Tangled and (God forbid) Yogi Bear during the half-term scramble by parents looking to keep their young'uns entertained, but it's worth a watch. It's camp and colourful, which makes it better suited to 2D than to the dimmed and darkened 3D, which just gets more boring with every successive release. It's not always predictable, and for the most part, it kept a smile on my face too.

Gnomeo & Juliet is now showing in 2D and 3D at cinemas nationwide.
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I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

TANGLED- Review

I make no secret of the fact that I heartily enjoyed last year's very traditional Disney outing The Princess and the Frog. I think it's great that John Lasseter is steering the company back towards its roots after Dreamworks and Shrek took up residence in the fairytale movie market. Adding more to the weight of my own anticipation for their new feature Tangled, it's Disney's 50th animated movie, and apparently the second most expensive movie ever made, somehow.

Anyhoo, this $260 million animation (no, really) is essentially the story of Rapunzel, as seen through the lens of the charismatic fugitive Flynn Rider. Flynn is wanted, dead or alive, and he hides out in Rapunzel's tower in order to escape the law. He doesn't count on the long-haired teen being so determined to get out of the tower for a while, and solve the mystery of the floating lanterns that fill the sky every year on her birthday.

Again, I really liked The Princess and the Frog, so this one is going to suffer slightly by comparison. As ever, this is my own opinion on the film, and so you could argue that it's for a much younger audience, my inclusion in which I've long since outgrown. I just don't think that Tangled measures up, especially after the promising reinvigoration seen in Disney's 49th feature. That film has a timeless quality that made it reminiscent of Disney's best. Aside from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, how many other films made in 1937 would your kids sit through just as happily as if it had been made today?

What Tangled goes for is more in the vein of the modern spin on fairytales, which Dreamworks has conflated to the millionth degree in their Shrek canon. For starters, it's trying to get boys as excited to see it as girls, hence the slightly ambiguous title. This attention to including its audience is probably more to do with the fact that it cost $260 million than any real desire to entertain young boys who are otherwise distracted by their XBoxes. If Cinderella had cost that much, they might have called it The Magic Pumpkin. A $260 million Sleeping Beauty might be The Dragon Witch. A hyper-expensive Bambi might have been Deers Get Shot, Ha Ha Ha Ha. And so on.

In the actual film, there are occasionally points where the all-inclusive approach actually does work. From a studio whose most profitable franchise features pirates, figures renowned for their raping, pillaging and stealing, it's not surprising that they have a roguish criminal like Flynn as a leading man, but slightly more surprising that he's so unlikeable. Audiences are more likely to be entertained by Maximus, a palace steed with more detective skills than any of the humans. This Inspector Horse figure is the best reason to see Tangled, and injects most of the film's humour whenever he appears. Similarly, I enjoyed the caricatured ruffians in the film, voiced by the likes of Ron Perlman, Richard Kiel and Brad Garrett.

I'd also give kudos for the villain, even if she doesn't get a badass Disney villain song in the tradition of her predecessors. Mother Gothel is a character with proper motivations, and when you get the villain right in a Disney fairytale, half the battle is already won. My disappointment at the lack of a good old villainous sing-song extends to the rest of Alan Menken's soundtrack too. Aside from the rather brilliant "I Have A Dream", which simultaneously subverts and conforms with the traditional Disney "here are my objectives" song, it's all very generic and poppy. It could come from any 90s Disney film, and with one particular song, I'm not convinced it wasn't from another film. It's a real comedown after Randy Newman's jazz-themed work on The Princess and the Frog.

From the perspective of a Disney fan who had every reason to really enjoy this one after last year's effort, I was slightly disappointed by Tangled. I can't help but think it might have charmed me more if it were a hand-drawn 2D feature rather than a polished CG piece that's closer to Dreamworks' output than anything else. The CG stuff looks nice and there are some very artful shots in here, but it somehow has less character than hand-drawn animation. That said, the family audience is under-served by January's releases, and this is never less than fun and cheerful. I'm sure those much touted younger audiences will lap it up, and all of my persnickety quibbles aside, I didn't dislike it either.

Tangled is now showing in 3D at cinemas nationwide, and at selected cinemas in 2D.
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I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch.

The Stoner's Van- LEGEND OF THE GUARDIANS Review

Enough time spent watching a nature channel like Discovery or Animal Planet will show you that there's far more to owls than the plushy-friendly post carriers they're depicted as in Harry Potter. They're vicious flying bastards who rain death down on any number of smaller animals. Zack Snyder's reclaiming their fearsome image with Legend of the Guardians- The Owls of Ga'Hoole.

It seems to be set in a world where owls are the dominant species instead of humans, with dynamics reminiscent of Watership Down or The Secret of NIMH. Our hero is Soren, an earnest young owl who's grown up with bedtime stories about the Guardians, the bold owl warriors who protect the world. His belief is put to the ultimate test when he and his brother Kludd are abducted and forced into an owlish brand of child soldiery by the self-proclaimed Pure Ones. It's down to Soren to find and alert the Guardians to the plight of owlkind.

As mentioned, there's a precedent for the lives of rabbits and mice being dramatised, so to all the detractors, I can only ask, why not owls? Funnily enough, the trailers have pushed this as coming "from the production studio that brought you Happy Feet" rather than "from the director of 300 and Watchmen." But it remains still a Zack Snyder film, so all credit to him for correctly thinking that owls fighting each other would make an engaging and enjoyable fantasy action film.

Animal Logic's work on the animation is fantastic, but it's also filled with Snyder's visual tics. It's not unmistakably one of his, but there's an appreciable amount of the slow motion that made 300 distinctive and which brought his version of Watchmen to over two and a half hours. It's good to see him doing something that's not laden with baggage like those films or his Dawn of the Dead remake, and it's a good sign for his upcoming Superman reboot.

Yes, Legend of the Guardians is just a film about owls fighting, but it's a film about owls fighting! Come on, you have to be a little curious, especially as I can report that it all looks magnificent. It looks as good as 3D possibly can, and the slow motion complements the excellent fight choreography, allowing your eyes to drink in every realistic flourish and nuanced visual detail. On the vocal side of things, we have some terrific Australian actors like Hugo Weaving, Sam Neill and David Wenham lending their wise and austere tones to feathered counterparts, while Jim Sturgess does a passable Aussie Frodo turn.

I say Aussie Frodo because The Lord of the Rings is just one of the influences that the film wears on its sleeve. It's Joseph Campbell's narrative structure down to a tee, and more pertinent to younger viewers, it's basically Star Wars, right down to the climactic scenes. The imperious bad guy, Metalbeak, is oddly reminiscent of Colonel Kurtz from Apocalypse Now in places, but the plot's basically making him out as Owl Hitler. Sorry, but if you're not booking tickets now you know it's a film about warrior owls fighting some white supremacist owls, I don't know how else to sell it to you.

Even though the story is formulaic, there are only a couple of beats where I cringed. For one thing, there's a montage in the middle, filled with the kind of visual world-building that James Cameron drew out to its fullest length in Avatar. That's fine, but it's set to a pop song by Owl City. Aside from jarring with David Hirschfelder's sweeping score through the rest of the film, it's a little too on the nose (or beak)- it's like setting a montage about a chattering guinea pig finding fame and fortune to a Justin Bieber song.

In mentioning Avatar though, I should mention that Legend of the Guardians is basically this year's answer to that film. Its sumptuous and fantastic visuals, straight from the side of a stoner's van, are worth the price of admission alone, but story-wise, it's nothing we haven't seen a million times before. That said, I think it's more impressive than this half-term's other unoriginal animated offering, Despicable Me and it's not doing as well as James Cameron's film at the box office, but then Snyder will be busier with the Man of Steel anyway. The concept is so out there that I think they had to make the story more ordinary to make it the serviceable family fantasy that it is.

Legend of the Guardians- The Owls of Ga'Hoole is now showing in 2D and 3D at cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Legend of the Guardians- The Owls of Ga'Hoole, why not share your comments below? More than just owls fighting, this also has bats with knife-tipped wings. Even Batman never thought to give knives to bats... and he's Batman!

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

Deja Gru- DESPICABLE ME Review

The autumn half term is fast approaching, and as The Film Distributors Association points out before every film you see in the cinema, there are some family films incoming. One of the most promising is Despicable Me, despite how its plot is basically identical to Megamind. It's proven a big hit in the States, and it arrives in the UK with Universal trying to consolidate the foundations of their new animation studio.

It's all about Gru, a supervillain who has fallen behind as he's grown older, and younger, more eager rogues jump into the fray. With an army of genetically engineered chattering yellow Minions, Gru launches his greatest plan yet- to steal the Moon and hold it to ransom. To achieve this, he has to best his rival, Vector, and plans to do so by adopting three young orphaned girls to work undercover.

I went in hoping for something on par with the excellent Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and though it's not quite as memorable or massively enjoyable as that film, it's got a similar brand of imagination and sense of humour, and I liked Despicable Me quite a bit. The problem is, the similarities don't stop with Flint Lockwood's adventures. While I did like Despicable Me, I liked it a lot better when I saw most of it in other animated hits.

There's a grumpy and cantankerous protagonist who learns to let people in, just like in Up. There's a huge number of diminutive alien-looking things that are always getting into trouble, just like in Toy Story. There is- no, really- a dance number, just like Shrek. The latter is the worst offender, to be honest, because it feels like directors Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud didn't know how else to end the thing. While it looks unique, it's certainly not original.

Oddly, it also feels a lot shorter than it actually is, which I suppose should be a sign that it went by quickly and I wish there'd been more. But instead, it feels like the premise wasn't big enough to support a 95 minute film. The plot moves quickly with the aid of a couple of musical montages that just come across as a bit lazy. So really, I don't want to see Despicable Me 2 (Me Too?) all that much, because I feel it'd stretch my patience a bit.

Steve Carell does a fine job of voicing Gru, with a cadence that falls between Ricardo Montalban and Bela Lugosi. It's still recognisably his voice if you listen hard enough, but it's always great to hear a relatively big-name actor bothering to create a character in their performance. So often in films like these, you have Angelina Jolie droning into a microphone and waiting to pick up a cheque, or pandas who might as well say "Hey kids, it's me, Jack Black!"

There are films far more original than Despicable Me that have still wound up being less engaging and entertaining. Cute is the order of the day, and even at its most saccharine, it's a charming film. It never really outstays its welcome, even with a slim premise. I strongly suspect that the French have done this premise better here than Dreamworks will manage in Megamind, but in the year that How To Train Your Dragon came out, let's keep our fingers crossed for a surprise. In the meantime, Gru and his minions provide predictable and inoffensive fun that will definitely keep the kids occupied if Legend of the Guardians just looks too weird for them.

Despicable Me is now showing in 2D and 3D at cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Despicable Me, why not share your comments below? If you think Legend of the Guardians looks weird enough to actually be looking forward to it, that makes two of us. Just two of us, as far as I've seen. Aww.

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

Now You See Him... - THE ILLUSIONIST Review

Sylvain Chomet's latest animation, The Illusionist is all about a stage magician in the early 60s, whose act is being supplanted by rock stars in the hearts and minds of audiences. With no one interested as much, he decides to try and find employment in Scotland, heading for Edinburgh. Along the way he picks up a young girl who believes he really is a magician, granting him a new responsibility.

This one is the fulfilment of a long unproduced script by French writer and director Jacques Tati. It's believed Tati wrote the script with his estranged daughter in mind for the lead role, and his aspirations to reconcile set the tone for this one, in a way. The relationship between the illusionist and the girl is paramount to the film's central theme.

Because bigger than that, this is essentially a film about the end of innocence, and the death of illusion. It's wrapped up in charm and whimsy, but it's impossible to not feel the final emotional sucker punch. Watching it is like being enveloped in a warm hug for an hour, only to realise you've been stabbed in the heart by the hugger at some point or other.

The death of the music hall and old-timey entertainment is prominent, and more stirring than it really has any right to be- I'm only 20 years old, and have no nostalgia for that era because I wasn't alive. It's one of a number of ways Chomet appeals to younger audiences, also transcending the language barrier by keeping the dialogue to a minimum. The dynamics of the comedy are similar to Mr. Bean, or the first twenty minutes of WALL·E- there is inflection, but the storytelling is largely visual.

It all looks very nice. It's of the same unpolished and slightly scratchy aesthetic as that period where Disney animations looked like 101 Dalmatians or The Aristocats, but it's still very well drawn. More than I was at the time, I was saddened that I didn't get to see this at the Edinburgh Film Festival earlier in the year, because the way the city is realised in the film could only have been more atmospheric if I'd actually seen it there.

I was honestly surprised by how accessible The Illusionist is. Lots of families were in the screening I caught, and they all seemed to enjoy it immensely. Like the best animations, it has deeper connotations for the adult viewer but it's funny and whimsical enough that kids will adore it too.

The Illusionist is still playing in selected cinemas around the country, and will arrive on DVD in 2011.
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If you've seen The Illusionist, why not leave a comment on the film and/or my review? I'd have mentioned that this isn't to be confused with the Edward Norton film, but that film already isn't to be confused with The Prestige. It was fine, but both Nolan and Chomet are leagues beyond that film.

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

Avoiding THAT Face

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.

Vikings love killing dragons in the latest from Dreamworks Animation, How to Train Your Dragon. The black sheep of the island community of Berk is Hiccup, son of chieftain Stoick the Vast, who's more interested in making things than killing. After a lucky shot during a dragon raid on the island's livestock, Hiccup ends up befriending Toothless, a rare dragon whose tale he managed to damage. As he learns more about Toothless, he comes to realise that Viking dogma about dragons is entirely wrong, and that there may be a way for both to co-exist. But as the pressure mounts on Hiccup to continue the Viking legacy in light of his new understanding, their friendship becomes difficult to maintain...
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From the outset, I have to say that How to Train Your Dragon should really be the criterion for Dreamworks Animation. Under bean-counting Jeffrey Katzenberg, the studio has had more misses than successes because they just rehash animation's greatest hits and their own back-catalogue. When I say misses, I mean creatively and not just the contribution to the studio's bank balance- no one will persuade me that Madagascar 3 is being made for any other reason than to capitalise on the box office returns of the first two. Instead, Dreamworks frequently brings in anachronistic pop-culture references and less than talented voice actors who just have bankable names, dating their output considerably.

How to Train Your Dragon on the other hand is just a revelation, and it's potentially the best thing the studio has ever made. Yes, possibly better than Shrek, a film which has suffered in my reckoning for being dated and of course the multitude of sequels. This isn't a film where a bunch of talking animals pull that expression. You know the one. Yeah, THAT one. This is a film that does have sequel prospects from the follow-up books in the series this is based on, but operates entirely fine as a self-contained story. Also, the voice cast are relatively suitable for their roles as opposed to putting Jack Black in as a Viking- even though one of the young characters actually looks to have been modelled on the Dreamworks stalwart.

There are various recognisable tropes and staples, but then most films have those, and How to Train Your Dragon treats the "going native with the perceived enemy" plot with an approach that is distinct to Avatar, which was in production at the same time as this. There are a lot of coincidental similarities with that film actually, but not distractingly so. The upside of this is that it is just as visually bedazzling, with the unlikely choice of Roger Deakins as cinematographer elevating the look of the film to truly spectacular heights. The script is also strong, even if it's not as typically comedic as fans of Dreamworks may expect. What's good about this is that it's more witty than funny, and I found that much more preferable to having a horde of gags that miss the mark. And when it was funny, I really laughed out loud.

Of course, it's not perfect. I do still have a couple of complaints with the voice acting, specifically that the Scottish tones of Gerard Butler and Craig Ferguson work well with the adult Vikings, but why then have all the young protagonists been Americanised in dialect? This is by no means a new thing in Western animation, but Jay Baruchel's vocal performance as Hiccup is more reminiscent of Woody Allen than of anything even approaching Norse. David Tennant became a fan favourite amongst readers for narrating the audiobooks and some of the film's promotional material- could they not have got him into the film too? In that much at least, I think Katzenberg's influence is detectable, as he also runs a couple of through those greatest hits of animation in a couple of sequences that seemed inspired by scenes in Aladdin.

For the most part, I have next to no complaints. It's not up there with the best of Pixar, but you should know that the trailers for How to Train Your Dragon really don't do justice to this exciting family adventure that's very easy to like. The character design and script are both nearly flawless, and if it's let down by some of the voice acting, it doesn't bring the whole venture down. Although the final setpiece somewhat contravenes the film's central morality, it's still a sound morality for the most part- don't be afraid of what you don't understand, and try to learn about it instead. It's more thoughtful and gripping than I could have hoped for, and it's a truly unexpected pleasure to watch it.

How to Train Your Dragon is in cinemas nationwide now, showing in 2D and 3D. I saw it in 2D, obviously, because I really believe 3D doesn't add anything. In this case, I really don't mind how you see it, so long as you do. Films like this from a studio like Dreamworks deserve to do well- let me know what you think in the comments.

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

Hand Relief

In this most inappropriately monikered post for a long time (you have to go way back to the Brüno/Public Enemies two-fer for worse), I'm taking a look at the return of hand-drawn animation to the big screen- Studio Ghibli's Ponyo is Hayao Miyazaki's re-telling of The Little Mermaid and Disney have recently dusted off their lightboards to bring us The Princess and the Frog. 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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Ponyo is the sweet and decidedly fishy star of Studio Ghibli's latest, the daughter of a powerful underwater wizard called Fujimoto, who wants to redress the balance of nature so that the ocean-raping humans are wiped out. While this marine coup is going on, Ponyo explores the shallows of the sea, close to the shore of a small island. There she's found by Sosuke, a young boy who loves the sea and adopts Ponyo, mistaking her for a goldfish. By taking her on land, Ponyo is imbued with the ability to become human, which leads Fujimoto to advance his plans against humanity. As bitter old lady Yoshie warns Sosuke, fish with faces coming out of the sea will cause a tsunami...

As a caveat to this review, I should say I saw the English dubbed version of Ponyo, which features the dubious voice talents of Frankie Jonas and Noah Cyrus, siblings of their respective horrid family phenomena. Needless to say, this ruined the film. I get the feeling that watching the film in Japanese with English subtitles, or even just muted, would vastly improve it. It's a shame to see Disney drop the ball on the dub with this when they made masterstrokes like Michael Keaton as Porco Rosso, or basically everyone who did a voice in the dubbed Howl's Moving Castle. Compared to those, the casting of Jonas and Cyrus just makes the film shrill. Horribly shrill.

I said in my Percy Jackson review that a certain crass quality creeps into a lot of American features, but it's never so irksome in any other Ghibli audio retooling as it is here. The song playing over the credits is just ear poison, like Disney is pulling off some Claudian attack to leave the worst taste possible as you race from the cinema. But even for the shrill stuff, there is a lot to enjoy here, as with all Ghibli efforts. Its flights of fancy are bolstered by a beautiful visual sensibility, from landmarks to character design. The story goes through the motions and is almost anti-climactic, but the target audience is children, and I bet they'll adore it. It's leisurely paced, and you'd be hard pressed to hear the understated vocals of Liam Neeson and Tina Fey when you're on the Cyrus wavelength, but this is a film that will appeal to kids without patronising them and it looks dazzling to boot.

The dubbed version of Ponyo is irresistibly cute just so long as nobody's speaking. I'd be very interested to see the Japanese version, because the English dub exacerbates the slightly saccharine aspects of the plot development and Miyazaki's body of work has already shown us that his stories transcend language and culture. Dubbing aside, the very worst you can say about it is that it's the least good Ghibli film- it's too good to be the worst, but not even close to as good as my personal favourite, Porco Rosso. Hayao Miyazaki continues to pioneer new techniques in hand-drawn animation and storytelling, which is no mean feat for an art form that's been around for almost a century.


Studio Ghibli have consistently championed hand-drawn animation in the wake of Disney's abandonment of the craft, but in an ironic twist of fate, John Lasseter, who pioneered the shift that made computer animation viable in the first place while at Pixar, has now brought Disney back to its roots. The Princess and the Frog is a more unconventional adaptation of a fairy tale than fans of Disney animation will be used to- set in 1920s New Orleans, the heroine is Tiana, a waitress who works night and day in pursuit of her dream of opening a restaurant. Elsewhere, the arrogant Prince Naveen falls afoul of the manipulative witch doctor Facilier during a visit to Louisiana, transforming him into a frog. Tiana and Naveen soon collide and end up being thrown together in a fight for survival to become human once more.

The synopsis sounds similar, I'll grant you, but it's easy to underestimate the value of handdrawn animation and its craft here. Disney's New Orleans is a vibrant place that actually embeds proper characters as opposed to American-accented clones- note how the only one who looks Middle-Eastern in Aladdin is the bad guy Jafar, with the hero instead being modelled on Tom Cruise, of all people. Tiana's story is central, but in the beginning it's almost as an adjunct to the "real princess" in the film, who's portrayed as spoilt, dependent on men and generally immature, whereas Tiana works hard and knows there's no marriage-related shortcut to the life she wants. It's a departure from Disney's usual, to be sure. At the same time it has immense nostalgia value for people my age and older. For today's kids, the Shrek films will be nostalgia material in the future. But while I'm sure there's a lot of work put into the animation of those digitally animated films, there's nothing like the meticulous attention to detail in this film and films like it to dazzle audiences.

It's every bit as good a story and as good-looking as anything from Pixar and Dreamworks, and bucks various Disney tropes without throwing out the baby with the bathwater. For instance, there's a "Disney death" (see Snow White as opposed to Mufasa) at the end that actually isn't a Disney death. It's just a death! The character in question stays dead! It's a wonderful departure and I haven't ruined it for you by mentioning it- the beauty is in how it's executed. On more familar ground, we have a terrific jazz-centric soundtrack and Dr. Facilier, a villain in the best tradition of Disney villains, who is voiced magnificently by Keith David. He brings exactly the right amount of malice to make young kids shit themselves and delight older viewers with his villainy. It's a superb balancing act from old-school Disney scribes/directors Ron Clements and John Musker, and the whole film passes muster as well.

If there's a fault with The Princess and the Frog, it's that it doesn't quite match up to the best of the Disney animated films of the 90s. It's not as funny as The Lion King, and its songs aren't as catchy as those in Aladdin. But it succeeds on many levels as a statement of intent for Disney under John Lasseter. A few years ago, this might have been closely followed by a sub-par DVD sequel called something like "Louis' Grand Adventure", but Lasseter has the studio revering its rich history rather than pillaging it for lame spin-offs. Hand-drawn animation is back in a big way at Disney, and The Princess and the Frog is a really rather delightful spearhead for that revival.

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Of the two animated films, The Princess and the Frog is the more likable and generally more accomplished, though I'm sure that any of my problems with the dubbed version of Ponyo are more than compensated for in the absence of any Disney bred tweens in the original Japanese version. Why not share your comments on the films and/or my reviews below?

I fear the end may be approaching, my friends. I'm approaching a cinema outing this Wednesday with the same trepidation with which David Tennant's Tenth Doctor approached death on New Year's Day. Not to pre-suppose anything, but I'm so scared that Valentine's Day might actually finish me off. I could do so much more! So! Much! More!

Ahem.

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

The More Things Change...

The year is 1996, and I'm experiencing the first of many absolute obsessions in my life, and it's with a film I haven't even seen yet. The (almost) six years of my life so far have largely centred around watching Winnie the Pooh, Mr Bean and repeats of the 1960s Batman series on Channel 4. Nothing before or since captivated me like the marketing for Toy Story, the first ever completely computer animated feature film. It was colourful, interesting and quite frankly, it looked like the most amazing thing ever to me. This was the start of mine and everyone else's dalliances with Pixar.

Of course, the year now is 2009, and I've gained about three feet in height, a few GCSEs and A-Levels a cynical outlook on life, the universe and everything. But Toy Story is still brilliant, as are the vast majority of Pixar's other nine films. Even their only misfire thus far, 2006's Cars wasn't awful- the world just probably wasn't ready for a "toyetic" animated remake of Doc Hollywood. Their latest effort, Up, is the story of a retired balloon salesman called Carl Frederickson being evicted from his house by distinctly Agent Smith-like property developers. So because it's a Pixar film, his natural response is to lash up a quarter of a million balloons to his house and fly it to South America. Accidentally picking up a naive boy scout called Russell, Carl discovers a lost world and ends up embroiled in a feud with his childhood hero. It can never be said that Pixar is anything but original in its storytelling, and I toddled along to see Up on Saturday in much the way I go to see any other films they make, and here's what I thought, with the usual considerate lack of spoilers.


That said, I'll try to warn people in advance not only that Up crosses that threshold that few other Disney films cross, but that it does it in the first ten minutes. Yes, you know what I mean. Mufasa, Bambi's mam, and now... well, you'll see. It's utterly galling and more mature in places than anything in any family film I can think of. But nevertheless, those first ten minutes are just absolutely perfect. Literally, probably the best scenes in any film released this year. Beautifully animated and acting as a preface to the lighter antics to come. It's not jarring that the tone shifts back once the film crosses that threshold, because the balancing act that director Pete Docter creates means that the sad bits are absolutely heart-wrenching, but not so much that you can't laugh at the really funny bits that follow once the narrative really gets going.

It's not a mark against the film that it never quite lives up to that perfect opening, because it is still very good and very enjoyable, which goes without saying when it comes to this company. You know you're in safe hands, but ten films in, it takes something really exceptional for people to sit up and take notice. Up is being critically acclaimed by all and sundry, but I'm wondering if a day will come when Pixar is constantly expected to up the ante and make films better and better than what has gone before, purely because they're so good at this. This is an outstanding film, but it's not their best. The trouble is that besides the physics-related implications of the central premise, the film is more rooted in the real world than Docter's directorial debut, Monsters Inc. And now his sophomore effort loses steam a little once the house arrives in South America, giving way to a slight mish-mash of ideas. I had similar issues with WALL·E last year, but I loved that too. And the last paragraph comprises everything that detracted from Up as far as I'm concerned- the rest of the film is marvellous.

More than anything else, you have to applaud any film where the protagonist is a good 70 years older than the target audience, especially when that film makes the audience care about the character so quickly. But on top of that, the supporting characters are rather terrific- Jordan Nagai is funny and charming in his film debut, voicing Carl's de facto sidekick Russell, and Pixar voice-regular Bob Peterson as a talking dog called Dug is arguably one of the best part of a film where there are lots of things to praise. Up is one of those films that's just delightful. It's certainly not lacking in substance, by any stretch of the imagination, but all the same you're going to leave the cinema with a great big smile on your face. I saw the film in 2D by the way, and it's just as good, so it's safe to avoid shelling out extra to see it in 3D. It's pointless to go on any further when most people are already persuaded of Pixar's general genius, not to mention the fact that I've already given my epitaph for this review- just delightful.


Apologies for going all over the place again, but let's take another look at 1996. You've probably all seen Toy Story by now, but for the uninitiated, it's the story of a group of toys who come to life when their owner leaves them unwatched in his bedroom. The first film begins with hand-me-down cowboy doll Woody ruling the roost, a role which is usurped in the wake of their owner's birthday. His favourite gift is a brand-new spaceman action figure, Buzz Lightyear, who quickly becomes more popular than Woody. The pair's bickering sends them hurtling into the big bad world outside the bedroom, as Woody struggles to get home and Buzz, who believes he really is a spaceman rather than a child's action figure, trying to launch into outer space to fight for Star Command.

Similarly to Up, it's a buddy movie. You might say not much has changed, and in some respects you'd be right, because Toy Story was recently released again on the big screen, with the sequel to follow in January, and I absolutely adored it. Just as I was 13 years ago, I was absolutely transfixed. The jokes are still funny, the story is still brilliant and literally every time I see it, I notice something new- who noticed that the fireworks company supplying young boys with massive explosives was called Ill Eagle (illegal), with a sniffy bald eagle as its logo? And it's in things like this that the film's enduring appeal is guaranteed- the friends I saw it with all said they noticed more of the adult oriented jokes they didn't pick up on when they were younger. This is a film with cross-generational appeal that goes beyond nostalgia value- it continues to appeal because it is so damn good.

Everything is just pitch perfect. To try and get a bit of coherence to my gushing, I could point out that this is the only Pixar effort where studio interference from Disney could be inferred. It's the only one that fits that Disney musical sort of template, with numbers by Randy "Sings What He Sees" Newman appearing throughout, and maybe it's only me who thinks about these things enough to wonder whether or not it's a matter of Disney values that Woody seems to have lost the gun that should go in his holster. Sorry, this doesn't have any coherence does it? No, it sounds like a film nut rambling about studio politics because he watched the DVD and found out Disney were going to pull the plug on the film at one point. You can always tell I like it when I can't articulate how good it is. What I'm getting at is the fact that this is one of my all-time favourite films for a reason- it never, ever gets old.

At the film's climax, the rocket blasts into the sky and Woody and Buzz are carried what seems like miles into the air, above the moving van. This is the part where they blow up, Woody tells us, but Buzz has other ideas, and suddenly I'm six years old again, getting goosebumps as that music comes on and they fly after the car. I'm now 19, and should really be gushing about more mature fare, but screw that. Toy Story is one of the few completely perfect films ever made, and I defy anyone to say otherwise.

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Ahem, after that almost embarrassing gushfest, I still have a few other films to look into. Already seen Zombieland, and I promise a review of that will be coming up, and this week sees the release of The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus, Couples' Retreat and Fantastic Mr. Fox too, so you can expect those to be incoming as and when I see them. In the meantime, if anyone else fancies sharing the Pixar love, feel free to comment. :)

I'm Mark the mad prophet, and until next time, watch Toy Story over and over again, on loop, forever. You've got to love it.

The Final Reel: Historically Challenged

Yup, this is the last time you'll see these blog posts headed with the admittedly not-very-good pun "The Reel Deal". That ship has sailed, and it's time for a rebrand, the theme of which has already been glimpsed in my Transformers 2 review. But for now, I'm going to review two films set around about the same time period, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Year One, both of which would come under rather intense scrutiny from any Oxbridge scholar looking into their historical accuracy. But then I suppose most Oxbridge scholars know that animals don't speak English, and so films are usually exempt from such quibbles. Let's just say Ridley Scott clearly never worked on either of these films.

Reviews, as ever, shall contain minor spoilers, but not so far as to ruin your enjoyment of the films in question if you haven't seen them yet.

ICE AGE: DAWN OF THE DINOSAURS


Who's in it? It's a cartoon of course, so we get the returning voice talents of John Leguizamo, Ray Romano and Denis Leary from the first two and a new voice in the form of the excellent Simon Pegg.

What's it all about? Sid the sloth (Leguizamo) is getting broody as his herd moves on in life- Manny (Romano) is soon to become a father and Diego (Leary) is off to regain his self-esteem as a predator. He steals three eggs he finds embedded in the ice with the aim of mothering them, but discovers they belong to a dinosaur, who aren't as extinct as first thought.

Any good? I've been groaning for months at the mention of this film. I love the first Ice Age, but felt the second was a step too far. The only really accomplished studio when it comes to animated sequels is Pixar, and Ice Age: The Meltdown did nothing to change this. But most of all, that title. "Dawn of the Dinosaurs?!", I wailed. "Dawn of-- the Ice Age came after the dinosaurs! What's wrong with cinema today? I-- hey, where did all my friends go?" Having coaxed one of my startled companions back to the cinema, I went in with some trepidation. I expected little more than the first sequel, but this time in 3D. The continually irksome glasses aside, this film actually wasn't that bad.

It's certainly not comedic genius. The first film was really good, in my opinion- it seemed to show promising things from the then-new studio Blue Sky, and it's one of the better animated films of the last decade or so. This instalment doesn't measure up to that but it's certainly a lot better than its immediate predecessor, even if it does reprise the most annoying of the new characters from that film. For starters, they took the dinosaur thing in a direction I certainly wouldn't have thought they'd manage. Rather than just have dinosaurs wander around all this time, it emerges that they're hiding under the ice, a la Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth. In aping that it's obviously not massively original, but it displays more thought than I anticipated. As far as plot goes, it's much the same as the previous two- the makeshift herd that comprises the main characters go on a trek to recover/deliver one of their friends to safety.

Nevertheless, it supersedes the second film because it's funnier, plain and simple. Yes, it's still not as clever in its humour as Ice Age, but makes up for it with copious amounts of Simon Pegg. Buck is a debonair weasel who guides our heroes through the underground world with more than an implied degree of madness, and Pegg voices him with great aplomb. The film is still a little too reliant on the continuing frustrations of Scratt, the acorn-hungry squirrel, who this time gets a female counterpart, imaginatively called Scratte. This brings nothing to the film that we haven't seen in the assorted Scrat appearances to date, but there's a genius interlude towards the end to the tune of "Alone Again Naturally" with its lyrics retooled from the acorn's point of view. I shit you not. More annoying and unfunny are the possums, Crash and Eddie, demonstrating Hollywood's continuing inability to create twin comic-relief characters that don't make me want to hurt myself and those around me.

As with several 3D animated films, the 3D doesn't really lend anything to Ice Age- Dawn of the Dinosaurs, but it's an inoffensive and mildly enjoyable addition to the series. There are too few big laughs for it to measure up to the original, but it's well-animated and Simon Pegg is the most enjoyable aspect.



YEAR ONE


Who's in it? Jack Black (Tropic Thunder), Michael Cera (Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist) and David Cross (Kung Fu Panda).

What's it all about? A hunter-gatherer team (Black and Cera) are expelled from their tribe right before it is invaded and enslaved by soldiers from the city of Sodom. The pair ineptly careen from biblical event to biblical event in an attempt to rescue the tribe.

Any good? Big budget comedies don't work. Perhaps I'm being absent-minded, but besides Tropic Thunder, I can't think of a single big-budget comedy from recent years that left any lasting impression. Jack Black was in Tropic Thunder, and yet here, he's doing a film that largely flounders. I did laugh occasionally, but not enough to call this a good comedy. I should say from the outset that I can't really criticise the film for not particularly sticking to the setting of its title like other reviewers have, because I'm an atheist and this is essentially based on the Old Testament- I already think its source material was a confused mess of mumbo-jumbo. Coming soon, Mark Harrison reviews the Bible, but now we're looking at this, which apparently aims to be a modern day version of Life of Brian. I hesitate to say that this is more like Epic Movie than Life of Brian, because as mentioned, I did laugh at Year One. Sadly it is closer to the works of Aaron Friedburg and Jason Seltzer than... who directed this? Harold Ramis?!

Harold Ramis, what are you doing? You directed Groundhog Day! To a lesser extent, you directed Analyse This! You're a fucking Ghostbuster! Where did you go so wrong with this? Just to put this in perspective for those of you who are scratching your head at the mention of Sodom in the synopsis, Harold Ramis has made a film where the heroes are out to save the city of Sodom- you know, the one God struck down and which later gave its name to practises inventively explored in Brüno- from slavery. Not that I'm anti-gay, but I didn't like the confused message they were trying to get across about Sodom. Jack Black rambunctiously says he doesn't see the bad thing about Sodom- are they saying standards have slipped in the last 2000 years? It only gets more garbled with an out-of-place subplot about the existence of God, and you suddenly realise that every good comedy in the last few years (with the exception of Tropic Thunder) has remained more or less rooted in the real world. Surreal historical comedy is more or less a dead genre, until the Python crew revisit it, and that's incredibly unlikely.

As for the cast, their roles are overwhelmingly limited to separate Bits, a la last month's Night at the Museum 2. Paul Rudd has a Bit, Hank Azaria has a Bit and Ramis himself has his own little Bit. And in the centre of the film we have Jack Black and Michael Cera, and you'll never believe what they do. Jack Black is rambunctious (hence the use of the word in the last paragraph) and outrageous, while Michael Cera is awkward and shy. You know, the kind of performances those actors have never ever given before. Although I like Cera usually, both his and Black's tried-and-tested approaches are wearing thin, and you wish Azaria, Rudd and Ramis- all much more gifted comic actors- had been around more. Instead, their roles are cameos that cast little bits of light on Year One, a film that is otherwise largely disappointing and utterly forgettable.



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Right, that's pretty much is for now. The next post is coming very soon and will cover one film all to itself- some little film called Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. That revamp is on the way, and will definitely be in place by the time we get to the next of these two-review-blogs, but you can expect that the Harry Potter review will have some artwork from Fearn Sobers eventually, if not at the time the review is first posted.

Until next time, don't watch anything I wouldn't watch,
Mark