LITTLE FOCKERS- Review

In doing my reading around the film before I wrote this review of Little Fockers, I realised it's been six years since Meet the Fockers was released. I was much younger, and that film was quite funny, then. Now, it doesn't really hold up, and making me feel old just compounds the crimes of this worse sequel, in my view.

The Fockers of the title aren't that big a part of the plot, but they're Henry and Samantha Focker, the young twin children of Greg and Pam. With big plans for their upcoming fifth birthday celebration, Greg's father-in-law Jack Byrnes suffers a minor heart attack. His pride and legacy on the line, he begins training Greg to take over as the patriarch of the family in case Jack's heart condition should worsen. Does that sound funny? Hell, does it even sound like a narrative?

Let's name and shame the greatest offender in Little Fockers right off the bat- it's Dustin Hoffman. One of the first bits of news that came out about this long gestating sequel was that Hoffman wouldn't be returning as Greg's father Bernie Focker because the script they were going ahead with wasn't good enough. I like Dustin Hoffman, and can admire that decision. That he eventually consented to reshoots, inserting him so clumsily into the film that he might as well have been composited into scenes with a green screen shoot, means only one thing- they offered him the right amount of money.

For everyone else in the cast, I can believe that it wasn't the money. The script is terrible, but I could see this as a rainy afternoon movie. Not as in the kind of film audiences like to watch when the weather is bad and there's nothing on telly, but a film that these actors would resort to if they were stuck without anything else to do and wanted to revisit a formula that worked in the past. Look at this cast! Ben Stiller, Robert DeNiro, Owen Wilson, Barbra Streisand, Blythe Danner and Teri Polo all return, and Jessica Alba and Laura Dern sort of stand around smiling for the camera, and you have to wonder why this film exists.

Robert DeNiro really needs talking to. This is his second film on the trot that co-stars Jessica Alba, and it's getting embarrassing. Just because The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle is still his rock bottom, it doesn't mean that he shouldn't be trying harder than this. Jack Byrnes, like all of the other characters in the Fockers canon, is a character who does not grow, or develop. He is crabby, he mistrusts Greg, he gets into various misunderstandings, realises the error of his ways and appears to come out of things wiser. Except he just resets to zero at the beginning of the next sequel.

Thankfully, it's difficult to imagine Little Fockers doing well enough for anyone to demand another outing for the Fockers and their extended family. It's less a film and more like a TV sketch show spin-off, based on the first two films. It takes those characters and completely divorces cause from effect in its narrative construction, and gives us a series of comedy skits rather than a film. They must have some amazing jokes to justify the existence of this thing, right? Wrong.

This film is not funny. What it is, however, is repetitive. It repeats itself as much as the previous two instalments. Have you seen the trailer for this thing? Jack calls Greg to tell him that he needs Greg to take over as the Byrnes family patriarch, and become... and there's a pause, just to allow you to prepare yourself for the orgasmic hilarity of this joke. And after the pause, he says... the Godfocker. Well if your sides split hearing that exchange in the trailer, you'd better bring spare pants when you see the whole film, because the very next thing Greg says is "The Godfocker?" And then Jack reiterates, for the cheap seats and says... "The Godfocker."

It wasn't funny once. It was not funny the third time. And Little Fockers is the third time out for a franchise that outstays its welcome with the Godfocker exchange, with over 70 minutes left of almost mirthless flim-flam to enjoy. It made me smirk two or three times, but so disconnected is its script that every time we go down a thread that might potentially be very funny, we cut away to find out what Owen Wilson's doing to earn that sweet sequel salary. Dustin Hoffman almost made me laugh once, but I was still too upset with him to enjoy it. It's a weak end to the series, to say the least, because I don't know that it is the end, but if I at least say it is, it might come true.

Little Fockers is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Little Fockers, why not share your comments below? If you do ask for a fourth Focker film, and that comes to pass, I'm coming to get you.

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

South of the Border... - MACHETE Review

Seen the above? That's as much fun as you can have with Machete. After the relative failure of the Planet Terror and Death Proof double bill grindhouse throwback, Robert Rodriguez returns to cod-exploitation with a feature length version of one of the fake trailers produced for the earlier films. Specifically, Machete- pronounced with a solid "ch" and not "sh". Ma-shete, Machete- let's call the whole thing off.

The plot is much as it appears in the trailer. They fuck with the wrong Mexican when They frame ex-federale Machete for an assassination attempt on a senator with a hard line on immigration. For the feature length version, Rodriguez contrives that They are on the senator's own staff, plotting to start a war between America and Mexican illegal immigrants. At what point in the trailer above did you find yourself looking forward to the social subtext to be had in a film called Machete?

I'm not one to complain that a film doesn't need a story. There are far too many films without good stories for me to ever legitimately grouse about that. The problem is that what I just called a social subtext is more like the entire film. I understand entirely that it's a thorny political issue in America, and that Rodriguez is probably taking a cue from his buddy Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds, doing what that film did for Jewish wish fulfilment in the context of relations between the US and Mexico. Remembering how Basterds was both serious and funny by turns as well as being a step away from Tarantino's own half of the Grindhouse twofer, this one falls considerably short of the mark.

I almost wonder which came first- the desire to make a statement on these issues, or the idea for the spoof trailer in Grindhouse. On the evidence of the feature, it was almost certainly the latter. It all seems like a massively over-elaborate conflation from a trailer that made us laugh in the spirit it was intended, but which can't be sustained over 100 minutes. Believe me, Machete outstays its welcome so much that it feels a hell of a lot longer.

In the way of Planet Terror, Machete doesn't even convince as exploitation, but then it's not trying as hard. Aside from the abominable CGI blood effects, there's none of the deliberately spoiled looking film-stock feel of the previous effort. What does return is the smuggery about all the recognisable actors in on the joke, but it returns in a fashion as over-the-top as it's possible to be. Jessica Alba, Robert DeNiro and Lindsay Lohan could all have been excised from the overly busy story at script stage, and like the overblown sense of political relevance added to the original gag of the trailer, their roles probably inflated massively after these casting coups were made.

You can't really fail completely when adapting an idea as enjoyable as the one in that trailer though, and Machete is not without one or two iconic action moments to make it worthwhile. Danny Trejo is often a joy to watch in the lead role, which only makes it more annoying when the myriad peripheral plot points crowd him off-screen for minutes at a time. Cheech Marin, Jeff Fahey and Michelle Rodriguez are all very game too, but likewise, there's not enough of them. It's a film that seems padded to fill 100 minutes when it could have comfortably been better at 70-80 minutes of its better moments, instead of the diluted version we got.

Machete seems to have been hijacked by the desire to spoonfeed a political message to the action-loving audience. The trouble is that in presuming this message to be a bitter pill, it becomes dumbed down to the extent that no one can really see the point for all of the red-splattered, limb-chopping, boob-bouncing action. It's over crowded to a fatal degree, and it really is a case where less would have been considerably more. Luckily, less already is more- that trailer's just up there, if you want to watch it again. If it's proper exploitation fun you want, Black Dynamite's finally coming to DVD, very soon.

Machete is now showing in cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen Machete, why not share your comments below? If you're wondering where that title's going, it'll all become clear tomorrow. To quote Black Dynamite, "I threw that shit before I walked in the room!"

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

Old and Noir

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.

It's a sign of the times when a romantic comedy set in the present day actually looks old compared to a noir thriller based on a pulp novel from the 1950s. Alas, that's the case with Michael Winterbottom's intense and uncomfortable new film, The Killer Inside Me and the latest from romcom arch-bastard Robert Luketic, snappily and misleadingly titled Killers. Hell, both involve killing, so it's all good right? Right?

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So Killers reunites Katherine Heigl with her director on The Ugly Truth, Robert Luketic. The collaboration we were all dying to see this year. She plays Jen, who meets a contract killer named Spencer while holidaying in France with her parents. He doesn't choose to share his past vocation with her once they put down some roots and "hilarity ensues" when his former bosses put out a $20 million hit on him.

There was a time when films provided a real escape from ordinary life for viewers who couldn't afford to actually travel the world, seeing beautiful places and beautiful people. As you'll have noticed, times have changed. Standards of beauty have adjusted and the ability to holiday in France is well within many people's means. Another minor change is that while the premise of this film wasn't great back when James Cameron did it in True Lies, it's even worse now.

The majority of this is just going to be me wailing on Katherine Heigl and Ashton Kutcher, because while they're not the beginning and end of the problems with Killers, they're certainly largely at fault. Maybe less so than the casting department, because the fact is that these two have absolutely no chemistry. Sure, we're meant to idolise each of them, but if you use that logic to say they make a good couple, we're in the same territory as the genetically suitable gag from The Invention of Lying.

Some of that idolatry is just weird though. At one point Jen refers to Spencer as a paragon of "god-like perfection". Really? The Punk'd guy?! OK, there's a certain level of over-statement in some romantic comedies that I can let slide, but Kutcher isn't likeable in this at all. He's not as bad as he was in Valentine's Day, but then nobody in that huge cast has ever been as bad as they were in that film. He's unequal to the task of being an interesting or convincing action hero here.

It doesn't help that he's no James Bond, but he utterly sinks when paired with Katherine Heigl as his er... lovely wife. After her star-making turn in Knocked Up, Heigl downright chomped on the hand that fed by calling it an immature and sexist film and she's had a succession of roles in romantic comedies like these. Casting someone this outspoken opposite an actor as weak as Kutcher leads to her apparently clueless character telling the experienced professional killer what to do. If this is Heigl's idea of a strong female role, it's impossible to see what her beef was with Judd Apatow's writing.

They're not entirely to blame- be assured that the script is routinely awful too. Luketic's direction is systematic and trite, and there's a poor attempt to compensate for the lack of a decent action star in the lead. This involves casting third-tier comedy actors as the sleeper agents sent after Spencer. While I admit that the one smirk this alleged comedy raised out of me was at the behest of that intense Vegas cop from The Hangover, he's no manner of hitman. See also, the woman who does the voice of Lois Griffin in Family Guy.

To be frank, Killers is a far cry from the worst film you could see this year and it's certainly not as bad as last year's Luketic monstrosity The Ugly Truth, but at the same time I can't understand why anyone would like this. It's not funny, it's not interesting and the leads make for the weakest double act since Pierce Brosnan and Halle Berry in Die Another Day. And at least you'd believe they could kill things- you can barely even believe Heigl and Kutcher would be friends.

Killers is playing in cinemas nationwide from June 18th
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The Killer Inside Me follows Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford on a destructive if subtle rampage through his sleepy hometown, Central City. Psychotic and mentally unbalanced by his troubled past, Lou embarks upon violent relationships with stubborn prostitute Joyce and childhood sweetheart Amy, while his colleagues race after him trying to attribute his atrocious crimes.

Director Michael Winterbottom has copped a lot of flak for the violence in this stylish noir-thriller, and to some extent, such a response is justified. I don't know whether or not he set out to offend people, but he's certainly unapologetic for the film's unflinching violence towards women.

He quite rightly says that those scenes are supposed to be repugnant, chiming with a long-held view of mine that the casual approach of killing hundreds or thousands of innocent bystanders in big dumb 12A-rated action films is more damaging than the harsh approach of films like this.

With controversy swirling around it regardless of what you or I think, it only remains to say whether or not it's a good film. On balance, yes it is. It has a compulsively watchable central performance from Casey Affleck as Lou, which makes those violent scenes all the more difficult to look away from. The man has a magnetic screen presence as a psychologically damaged, and therefore unreliable narrator and protagonist.

In any other film, you'd wince at the casting of Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba, two actresses who haven't exactly been setting the world alight with their great performances, line delivery or career choices. Here, they're both more than bearable, and even watchable. Hudson in particular is a highlight as Amy, the brow-beating girlfriend whose early hostility to Lou is possibly what stirs his resentment of women.

It's an intensely unlikeable film that's masterfully put together. As we delve into Lou's past and psychosis, our eyes are drawn to the lavish period detail, our ears to the utter dissonance of the soundtrack with what's going on in the story. I think it's in this that I was most reminded of two other films- American Psycho and No Country for Old Men. Given how the book existed long before either, you have to wonder if they drew from the protagonist and narrative of the novel, or if Winterbottom just recognised a familiar and proven way of telling a similar story.

The major quibble to raise with the film, aside from its uncompromising portrayal of violence, is with its pace. The film fills out almost 110 minutes with a languorous pace- a welcome break from the Boom Bang Wallop pace of other serial killer flicks. The friend I saw this film with declared it to be a pile of shit afterwards, because he was bored by it. I personally got entangled in its depravity and found it to be an intensely uncomfortable experience.

With source material that Stanley Kubrick once called "the most chilling and believable" that he had ever read, and an talent like Winterbottom at the helm, The Killer Inside Me is a genuinely disturbing thriller. The thrills may be scant on account of the pace, but those offended should realise that you're meant to be disturbed by the central character's actions. Being intrigued by this is no less valid than being amused by Killers. Present me one person who likes each film, and I'll tell you who I think is more unbalanced.

The Killer Inside Me is playing in selected cinemas nationwide.
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If you've seen The Killer Inside Me and/or Killers, why not comment on the films or on my reviews below? If you heard Katherine Heigl saying Killers was "a great movie" at the premiere, be sure to get in contact with Trading Standards about false advertising, as I have.

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