I fucking love American politics, especially during election season. They’re so much more ridiculous than the humdrum British politics I have to deal with. They’re basically just a massive spectacle, every candidate bending over backwards in order to please as many people with as many different views and opinions as they possibly can. You want to appease the anti-immigration crowd whilst also trying to attract a portion of the Latino vote. And there’s also the uncompromising religiosity (Christian religiosity, of course) that, if you don’t actually believe it, at least have to pay lip service to. “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States”, indeed.

So I was quite looking forward to watching ‘The Ides of March’, the George Clooney directed film about Gov. Mike Morris (Clooney), his campaign manager Paul Zara (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and deputy campaign manager Stephen Meyers (Ryan Gosling) as they attempt to defeat Senator Ted Pullman (Michael Mantell) and his campaign manager Tom Duffy (Paul Giamatti) in the Democrat primaries and win Morris the Democrat nomination for president.

As you can imagine in a taut, political drama things don’t go as smoothly as planned. Morris is unapologetically liberal, leaving him slightly unpopular with moderates and deeply unpopular with the more conservative contingent in Ohio, a problem because Ohio has an open primary meaning that registered Republicans are allowed to vote in the Democrat election. Both sides are also hoping to gain the endorsement of Senator Thompson (Jeffrey Wright) who, with his 356 delegates, would be able to secure the nomination for either man. The only problem with this is that Morris deeply dislikes Thompson and refuses to capitulate to his demands in return for the endorsement.

That’s about all I can say about the plot without giving too much away. Suffice to say it is a well acted, well scripted and well paced political drama with the number of twists that you’d expect to see in the week of any average political campaign (See the current Republican primaries for examples). Does it, however, really say anything new about the political process? Honestly, it really doesn’t. Yes, it’s an entertaining film but the commentary it has with regards to the world of politics, it’s ability to corrupt and jade anyone who involves themselves in it for any particular length of time, is something we have pretty much all been aware of since the Watergate scandal if not longer.

Of course, this isn’t the fault of the film. Politics and power corrupts. What more can you really say about that world at this point? Does that mean that we should stop making political dramas at all? Well no. Just because it has nothing new to say doesn’t mean that The Ides of March isn’t a good film. I suppose if there is anything new that it brings to the table it’s that it makes the political process far more personal than I remember seeing before. So there’s that. Anyway, I highly recommend this film, especially if you love the tipsy-topsy world of American politics as much as I do. Four pints out of five. Laterz.

I’ve never been a fan of Kevin James. I don’t find him particularly funny and I dislike the fact that he promotes the idea that average, overweight guys can get ridiculously attractive wives. Admittedly, this is something that has been going on since at least The Flintstones but Kevin James is not part of the solution and therefore he remains part of the problem. Also, he’s in some terrible, terrible films. Like proper shit. So it was with some trepidation that I decided to sit down and watch his latest effort, Zookeeper. That trepidation was well placed.

It’s basically the typical story of a guy who breaks up with his girlfriend, remains obsessed with her and enlists the help of his friends in order to try and get them back including a woman who agrees to help him but eventually falls in love with him herself. What’s so special about this particular iteration of this story? Well, apart from the girl, all of the friends who try to help him out are animals at the zoo where he works! Hilarity.

The animals are portrayed by a host of celebrity voices such as Sylvester Stallone, Cher, Nick Nolte, Adam Sandler and others and stuff. It really doesn’t matter because all they are really there for is to basically try and get Kevin James to act like their particular species in order to attract his mate. Yes, the man joke running throughout this film is that “Hey! Animals behave differently than to what people do! Could we possibly make a film out of that and stretch it for an hour and forty minutes by slapping it around some tired romantic comedy subplot? We can! Brilliant! Might as well print our own money!” Yeah, that’s how I think the pitch for this movie basically went.

Seriously Hollywood. I’m fed up of this shit. This is basically the ‘Cowboys and Aliens’ of talking animal/romantic comedy movies. Take two tired, old film premises, stick them in a blender and shoot. How many times have we seen a film where animals can talk to people? How many times have we seen a film where a man wants one woman only to realise the close friend was the woman for him all along? I want some goddamn fucking originality. Even if you have to rehash something, you can still make it awesome. Just look at ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’. An awesome film based on a concept which had been all but ruined by Tim Burton.

I guess I could say one thing was kinda funny. The opening scene where Kevin James goes to all the trouble of trying to make his proposal as romantic as possible only to have her reject him. That did make me chuckle. Slightly.

I really can’t be bothered to talk about this pile of wank anymore. Don’t watch it. Not even if your curious. If you see the DVD in the store, throw it on the ground, stamp on it and then punch the store employee who tries to throw you out in the face whilst screaming “I’m just doing my part for the good of mankind!” To sum up, it’s bad. Half a pint out of five for that opening scene and nothing else.

I never used to get on with Elmo. Like many people who watched old school Sesame Street I felt that he overshadowed some of the shows core classic characters and was generally pissed off with the little red monsters dominance over all aspects of the Street’s merchandising and marketing but I will admit that my impression of the character has softened recently mainly because of videos like this one:

What further helps to soften my image of my once most hated Muppet is the documentary I just watched, Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey, a film that covers the life and career of Kevin Clash, the man who would come to voice and perform the titular character. I shall not try to be spoilery in my review although it’s generally difficult to spoil a documentary unless it’s something like ‘Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father’. Anyway, on with the review.

Kevin Clash grew up in a relatively poor area in Baltimore and from a young age he found himself obsessed with puppets and puppetry. He used to sit glued to the television watching Captain Kangaroo and when, at age 9, Sesame Street came on the air that his obsession really took off and by age 10 he had built his first puppet out of his father’s best coat.

Kevin’s obsession grew and grew and he soon had a catalogue of eighty-five puppets and was performing shows in the local area, first for his mother’s day-care class and eventually schools. This led to him being teased by his fellow high school classmates but rather than be discouraged, he stuck at it, doing the thing that he loved no matter what anyone else said. He caught the eye of a local TV producer and soon got his first big break in the world of local television and the name calling soon turned to admiration and he was voted most likely to become a millionaire in his high school year book.

Kevin perfected his puppetry by mimicking the actions he saw on Sesame Street, learning to make a puppet move as though it were a real, living human being and he learnt to make the puppets themselves by watching as many specials by Jim Henson on the subject as he could. He finally got to meet one of his heroes, Kermit Love (Muppet building Master), on a school trip to New York and he helped the young man perfect his craft. It wasn’t long until Clash was attracting the attention of Henson himself and the rest is red felt covered history.

The film obviously goes into a lot more detail with regards to Clash’s life and career but I’ll leave the rest of that for you to discover for yourself. What I will say is that it a surprisingly inspirational and moving story for being about a man who performs a child-voiced Muppet. There were a number of occasions when I did feel tears welling up in my eyes, notably when discussing his work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the discussion of Jim Henson’s death (including clips from Henson’s memorial which always makes me a bit weepy). It also makes you feel like a little kid again, especially when you see the kids meeting Elmo and largely just ignoring the fact that there is clearly a man standing behind, operating him. They just fixate on the puppet as if nothing else in the world matters and their faces light up and you get to share in that sense of wonder too.

It is seriously the perfect film to watch at the beginning of a New Year, an inspirational tale of a man who had a dream, stuck to it, achieved it and even managed to go on to continue the spirit of his hero. If I have any criticisms it’s that the film’s a little short at around one hour and fifteen minutes and there’s no mention of the TV show Dinosaurs which I loved… Although Clash did play the series most annoying aspect, Baby Sinclair. Despite these factors, I’m going to give this film five pints out of five just as it’s given me a new appreciation for Elmo and what he’s really all about.

The film series that seems intent on completely and utterly retarding the way that movies are titled continues with this latest entry, Chipwrecked. I can’t help get the feeling that a committee was put together when it came to creating this film and the first point on the agenda was coming up with a stupid pun title and then creating a plot based on said pun. Thus we have the incredibly annoying story of six incredibly annoying chipmunks stuck in an incredibly annoying plot contrivance because the main aim of these films seems to be to do nothing more than annoy the shit out of everyone who might accidentally see them.

So, in case you hadn’t guessed from the title, the main point of this film is that the Chipmunks and the Chipettes find themselves stranded on a desert island and they have to find a way to survive and get off of it and find Dave and for the good sweet sake of fuck does it actually matter? There’s shit to be done out there in the real world and I’m sitting here writing about the third film in a series about musical rodents. Where did I go wrong in life?

See at this point in the series the pain is physical, mental and liable to cause an existential crisis. Seriously, who the fuck actually sees these films (apart from me) that they actually warrant a trilogy? Who the hell are these films even aimed at? The legally brain dead? Rocks? Especially stupid single celled organisms? Certainly not children because a film aimed at children wouldn’t spend quite a bit of it’s plot referencing ‘Castaway’, an eleven year old film that I would go out on a limb and say that absolutely none of it’s supposed target audience has ever seen.

So what magic does this entry in the series bring to the table? Well, we get to see David Cross in a pelican costume. That’s… something. And Simon, the sensible, responsible chipmunk is bitten by a spider whose neurotoxin causes him to think he is a suave, adventurous Frenchman. I may not be a neurotoxicologist but I’m fairly certain that neurotoxins don’t work that way. He is also cured of his affliction near the end of the film with a bump to the head which, again whilst not a neurotoxicologist, I am pretty fucking sure isn’t the cure to being infected with neurotoxins. This turn of events also leads to Alvin rejecting his mischievous ways and taking on the role of the responsible one and we all learn an important lesson about blah blah blah. Fuck this movie.

There’s also a kooky woman who the tiny annoyances meet who has been stuck on the island for eight years. She starts out being quite friendly, if somewhat bats hit insane, but it is later revealed that she is only the island be cause she is trying to find a hidden treasure. In the end it turns out only the chipmunks can reach the treasure and so she kidnaps one of them and forces them to gather it for her as the island becomes volcanic and begins to erupt. She eventually see the error of her ways and we all learn an important lesson about blah blah blah. Fuck this movie.

So yeah, the final scene is everyone coming together to escape the island before the volcano completely destroys it. Of course, in real life no one would be stranded for very long because that island would be swarming with scientists studying the island as it gets ready to erupt. Am I making to much out of the unrealistic nature of a film about six singing chipmunks? Yes. Yes, I most certainly am but these films have driven me literally to the brink of madness and what else am I supposed to do? Write about the plot in detail? That way lies even more madness, a madness from which I fear I would never be able to escape and do you really want that on your conscience? Well, I don’t care if you do or not because it’s an avenue I simply refuse to go down.

In summation, this trilogy of films is a massive cinematic triplets of abortions. They rank with the Transformers films as some of the worst things mankind have ever done to film. Hollywood needs to go to a therapist and show them on the doll where the Chipmunks touched it. I think you get my point. So this film gets zero pints out of five. It has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. If you take you’re children to see it, you are a terrible parent and should have them taken away. And next time I see a rodent, I’m stamping on it’s stupid tiny head and crushing it’s brains with it’s own skull. Unless it’s a chipmunk. I shall kill them slowly to make sure they suffer. Laterz.

I’ve never been the biggest fan of Tintin. When it came to that kind of comic book, I was definitely more inclined to read something like Asterix but apparently a lot of people do love the beautified, adventuring journalist because all I’ve heard for a while is how much people are looking forward to the big screen adaptation of Herge’s classic comic. Apparently the people who like Tintin really like Tintin.

So knowing that, keep in mind that I can’t really compare the film’s version of the characters with their comic book counterparts or indeed the general story to how it might have played out on the page. All I can do is judge the film on it’s own merits. Also I watched the film in 2D because, seriously, I’m sick of fucking 3D. It unnecessarily decreases the quality of the film because the stupid glasses make everything quite a bit darker which can really hamper the enjoyment of a bright, vibrant CGI film say, for example, Tintin.

Anyway, the film begins in what seems to be Paris although everyone talks with an English accent and things are paid for in pounds. Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense but whatever. There’s adventuring to be done and mysteries to be solved… Like maybe the mystery of why France has changed it’s currency to the pound… but no. Can’t dwell to much on that. The real mystery has to do with a model ship that Tintin (Jamie Bell) buys which immediately seems to attract the attention of a couple of other people including an American and the mysterious Sahkarine (Daniel Craig). The model ship is stolen and this leads Tintin on a globe spanning adventure that involves an ancient sunken treasure and leads to him meeting the bumbling alcoholic, Captain Haddock (Andy Serkis).

So that’s the basic gist of the film and saying too much more would give away a bit too much of the plot, what with it being a mystery and all. Overall, the film looks beautiful and really shows the leaps and bounds that CGI has come when it comes to creating human’s up on the screen. Gone are the creepy, dead-eyed days of something like ‘The Polar Express’. These characters work just as well as live action counterparts might have done and, for a film such as this, the style is completely appropriate. Motion capture technology certainly seems to have advanced quite far as well with each character managing to be just as expressive as a real person would have been. It all adds up to quite a believable world that at times reminded me of Indiana Jones. The good ones I mean, not that Crystal Skull shit.

The performances were all pretty much stellar. Serkis in particular completely nailed the part of a grizzled, drunken, down on his luck sea captain, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg bring their normal comic sensibilities to the role of the Thompson twins even though I feel they were slightly underused and Jamie Bell was completely believable as the optimistic, adventurous title character.

If there’s one criticism that I can really make about ‘Tintin’ it’s that the plot sometime moved forward a bit too quickly. It’s not a major problem but in a mystery you should perhaps take a little time to explain a few things a bit more clearly before just jumping into the next action set-piece. A prime example of this is Haddock and Sahkarine apparently both having memories of their ancestors. I never really understood quite how that worked but it’s a pretty minor problem in what is otherwise a fun little adventure movie. Overall, ‘Tintin’ gets four pints out of five. Laterz.

Cancer. It’s a subject that you might not think works that well in a comedy unless it’s in something like South Park. Is there a way to do a touching yet funny film about such a serious condition? Well, it turns out that there is as demonstrated by the subject of this review, ‘50/50’.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Adam, a man who’s life is acceptable but not particularly extraordinary. He doesn’t drink, he doesn’t smoke, he has an attractive, if somewhat emotionally distant, girlfriend (Bryce Dallas Howard) and he works at a local radio station with his best friend Kyle (Seth Rogen). So, like I said, nothing special but an agreeable existence. One day his whole life is turned upside down when he goes to the doctor to get some test results to find out what’s been causing his recurring back pains and he’s informed he has a rare form of cancer with a 50% survival rate. To help him deal with this he is sent to a trainee psychologist (Anna Kendricks).

And that’s about all I can really say about the plot without giving away too much in terms of spoilers. Needless to say that Adam goes through several stages of grief, anger, acceptance etc, all whilst trying to deal with the experience of going through his ordeal with cancer in his own way, generally trying to rely on help from the people around him as little as possible despite their own efforts to try and help him in their own way. Kyle tries to get Adam to use his illness to his own advantage by using his friend to help him pick up girls whilst also encouraging Adam to do the same. The character may seem a little selfish at first but it becomes clear that he really does care about his best friend and is basically just doing what he can to keep his spirits up.

There’s also Adam’s somewhat overbearing mother (Anjelica Huston) who, due to a lifetime of worrying incessantly about her son, Adam tries to push away (as kindly as he possibly can) even though this is a time in his life when he should really be seeking her care and love. This is made all the more difficult, and somewhat heartbreaking, because Adam’s father is suffering from Altzheimer’s and so, as Anna Kendrick’s character puts it “she has a husband she can’t talk to and a son who won’t.”

To sum up, ‘50/50’ is a film that manages to take a very serious subject, cancer and the way it affects the sufferer and the people around him, that manages to make it both funny and sweet. It made made me laugh and also brought a few tears to my eyes, especially the scene where Adam is talking to his parents right before he goes in for his surgery (but then again, I realise I‘m a massive pussy who cries at the drop of a hat in films. Fuck, I cried when I watched Jurassic Park in the cinema recently when the main theme played for the first time). I think it’s definitely challenging ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ as my favourite film of this year. Sure, it’s a bit saccharine at times but it never really goes too over the top in the sappiness department. It also has a pretty fine soundtrack. Seriously, if you watch one comedy about cancer this year, make it ‘50/50’. Five pints out of five. Laterz.

I have just finished watching what may be the worst film I have ever seen. And that really is saying something. I’ve seen ‘The Room’, ‘Troll 2’, ‘Birdemic’, ‘Plan 9 From Outer Space’ and ‘Battlefield Earth’ but at least they had some redeeming features. They were all, in some way enjoyable. They fall into the category of film that can be described as being so bad that they are good. It is fun to watch them just because they are so bowel-shatteringly awful and the important thing to remember is that each film takes themselves completely and utterly seriously. Cheerleader Autopsy doesn’t fall into this category. It falls into the so bad, it’s bad category and one of the reasons for this is because it’s intentionally trying to be funny and as far as horror comedies go, it makes yesterday’s entry, ‘Horny House of Horror’ look like Shaun of the Dead.

So what makes Cheerleader Autopsy so painfully unfunny? Is it the crude, incredibly lowbrow humour that includes a close up of someone hacking of their own penis (is every film I review this week going to involve some form of genital mutilation?), pressing down just above a dead girls corpse to make a jet of water shoot from her vagina and a hillbilly mistakenly shooting himself in the head when he thinks there is something wrong with his gun? No, I generally consider myself to be quite immature but these jokes just weren’t hitting home. I think what it may have been was the constant stream of immature and gross out humour. I think back to the films that I love which have quite a high level of what could be considered juvenile humour, such as the films of Kevin Smith, and the reason I’ve enjoyed them is because whilst they do have that level of immaturity, they are well written and always have something else going on in them as well, something substantial that raises the level of the film as a whole. Cheerleader Autopsy is poorly written, cramming as many stupid jokes in as it can within it’s short (but seemingly excruciatingly long) 73 minute run time and it has nothing of substance to fall back on.

So what is the plot of Cheerleader Autopsy? Well, that’s kind of like asking what is the meaning of life. There could be many interpretations but the question itself is practically unanswerable. There’s a cheerleader team called the Stinkwater Beavers (oh, the hilarity!), they get killed, there is a mental mortician who also happens to be the sheriff of the town and his nephew who works as his assistant. The mortician has another assistant who’s a bit socially retarded because he has a small penis (he’s the guy who chops off his own in order to attach a larger member from a body that’s brought in) and now that I think about it, I think there’s only one actual autopsy… although I suppose the film isn‘t called Cheerleader Autopsies so far enough. Oh and there’s jokes and hints about necrophilia and eating the brains of foetuses littered throughout. Now that I think about it, maybe it is the crude humour that makes this suck. I mean, eating the brains of foetuses? I’m a man who regularly makes jokes about paedophilia and even I think that’s going a bit too far.

Of course, the humour can’t be completely held responsible here. There’s also the terrible acting, terrible editing, terrible sound, terrible camera work, terrible picture quality and terrible everything. If you’ve seen Birdemic, imagine all of these things being a fraction better than that and yet Birdemic still remains the far more enjoyable film. Look, I’m really sick of thinking about this film and I’ve got a pub quiz to get ready for. Time to get completely drunk. To sum up just imagine you had a really stupid friend with a camcorder and a worrying level of access to a number of Real Dolls. The result would be something like this film. To further sum up, just watch the damn trailer. 0 pints out of five. Laterz.

Yes, it’s the most wonderful time of the year again, Halloween, and that can mean only one thing: Watching a huge amount of shitty horror movies in order to get you in the right mood. Sure, you could watch a bunch of good horror movies, and I’ll certainly be doing that after I’ve finished this week of bad ones in order to cleanse my palate, but the fact of the matter is that the majority of horror films aren’t worth the film they’re printed on.

It’s a genre plagued with crap largely because many people who make horror films think you don’t need to rely to heavily on plot. A couple of gruesome effects shots, a few gallons of blood and zang, you have a horror film. Another thing that contributes to the glut of truly awful horror films is the fact that, compared to some other genres, they can be done relatively cheaply. So with all that out of the way, let’s get on to the first entry of this cavalcade of crap, the Japanese offering ‘Horny House of Horror’.

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this before but the Japanese can sometimes seem a little weird to our Western sensibilities, what with their ultra-violent cartoon porn and their robots and what have you. But fair enough, each to their own and all that. I’m sure they find the prospect of NASCAR or uncensored hardcore pornography equally as weird. And sure, the Japanese never didn’t come up with some of the crazy shit that we have like the ‘Saw’ films, the ‘Hostel’ films or indeed ‘A Serbian Film’ (more on that later in the week) but they certainly have a certain talent for taking the term torture porn and really running with it. Just look at ‘Audition’ for example. And it’s kinda in this vein that ‘Horny House of Horror’ falls though with a bit more of an (attempted) comic twist.

The story begins inside Shogun Massage Parlour where a customer is receiving a happy ending of the oral variety from an employee, Nagisa (Saori Hara) and he excitedly tells her to suck as hard as she wants. She smiles, descends on his penis and proceeds to bite it of, much to the man’s chagrin. It tunes out that this is a most decidedly unhappy ending. Cue unrealistic amounts of blood and cut to credits. So yeah, this pretty much tells you what you should be coming to expect from this film.

After the credits we are introduced to three friends returning home after a baseball match, Nakazu (Yuya Ishikawa) a man about to get married, Toshida (Wani Kansai) and Uno (Toushi Yanagi). Besides Nakazu (and I might be being a bit generous), none of these characters really have much in the way of characterization. The two friends actually kinda seem to have the exact same personality which can be best be described thusly: They are both douche bags. Still, the three friends come across the Massage Parlour and Toshida and Uno decide they should get Nakazu a girl as one last gift before he is married. This makes Nakazu incredibly nervous as he’s never paid for sex before. In fact it’s hinted that, even though he’s a man of forty, he might still be a virgin. Also, he’s incredibly faithful to his wife to be even though she forced him to quit the baseball team and seems to ring him constantly to check up on him. Still his douche bag friends force him to go in there anyway. Because they are douche bags.

Upon entering the men are confronted with three holes through which the three female employees stick their arses so the men can judge just which one they’d like to be getting a “massage” from. This leads to fondling, pinching and farting causing much hilarity. No, wait. Not hilarity. What’s that thing that’s not hilarity? Oh yeah, boredom. Seriously, just get to the genital mutilation already… Hmm, never thought I’d find myself typing those words.

Finally after a short period of waiting during which Toshida and Uno continue to mock Nakazu, the action finally gets underway. It’s Toshida’s turn first and he get’s his revenge for the girl, Nonoko (Asami) farting in his face earlier by cumming in her mouth. She takes great offence to this and proceeds to cut his penis of with a metallic pair of jaws she has stashed away in her vagina. This results in an amount of blood that can only be described as biologically unfeasible, especially since Toshida survives this assault.

Next, it’s Uno’s member that’s on the chopping block, quite literally this time as he has been chained to a wall and has to resist getting a boner whilst Kaori (Mint Suzuki) does a sexy dance for him. If he manages to stay flaccid, he gets to keep his member and go free but if he fails and becomes aroused, his cock will be sliced off by a samurai sword. Of course, he fails leading to yet more crazy amounts of bloodshed.

Meanwhile Nakazu is managing to resist the charms of Nagisa and finally realises the danger that he’s in when he hears the screams of Uno as he is de-membered and he narrowly avoids Nagisa’s hand job with special acidic lotion. He attempts to rescue his friends but they both die along the way, as long as the two hookers who had so grievously wronged them. So in the end it’s down to Nakazu and Nagisa, both trying to escape as it turns out that the poor girl only worked there to raise money for her brothers. Unfortunately Nakazu is shot by a gun that emerges from the wall and Nagisa is left to confront the Big Boss who has been watching this whole time. He claims to have some grand scheme for removing all of the brothel’s client’s genitals and, as it turns out, keeping them in jars of formaldehyde but Nakazu accuses him of doing just because he has a small penis and is just jealous of every other man on the planet which I guess kinda makes sense but seems to be a bit of a harsh way to go about resolving the issue.

So what to make of a film about a whorehouse where customers are lured in with the promise of cheap sex on to get their members dismembered? Well, I kinda wished they’d made up their mind about whether they were making a horror or a comedy. Yes, horror and comedy can mix really well together but there needs to be a delicate balance. I suppose that if I had to call it, this tried to be far more of a comedy but it just wasn’t funny enough for that. As for the horror side, well, because of the continued attempts at humour it really wasn’t particularly scary either. It really needed to be a bit more over the top, violence wise, which is kinda odd for me to say because I’m generally not one for what has been dubbed ‘torture porn’ but when the film’s about something like genital mutilation then tortuous and hard to watch is exactly what those scenes should be. In the end it’s kind of like this old advert from America. Just imagine that instead of chocolate the guy is saying ‘genital mutilation horror’ and the girl is saying ‘cheesy sex comedy’ instead of peanut butter. Also imagine they are both incredibly disappointed by the outcome of the combination of both of these things:

On the plus side I suppose, the girls are hot and the acting is fairly competent throughout. The effects are, again, kinda underwhelming mainly because of the ridiculous amount of blood that ends up spurting everywhere. I know that this is kind of a hallmark of Japanese horror films, particularly those of these type but it just serves to pull me out of what is already a pretty ridiculous affair even more. All in all, the whole thing was just really, really unsatisfying and overall quite boring which is disappointing in something that probably should have been just a cheesy, fun film. Still, I’m sure this film will have it’s fans and bless their little cotton socks for getting something out of it that I just couldn’t find myself. One pint out of five.

I don’t really remember ever watching ‘The Smurfs’ as a kid but I know the basic gist of the whole thing. Bunch of little blue creatures live in a forest and an evil wizard tries to capture them. Pretty simple premise so why not take that idea and stretch it out in a live action/CGI mixed feature length film? Well how about because a) that’s a paper-thin premise that seems like it would require a lot of padding and b) The Smurfs are some of the most irritating fuckers to ever grace the silver screen. This is a point which is actually acknowledged several times throughout the film. If much of the supporting cast are pointing out just how unlikeable the little blue shits are, what makes the film makers believe that anyone watching it should care about them?

Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to point a. So how do you pad out such a simple concept? Well, you take the Smurfs and the evil wizard Gargamel (Hank Azaria) and teleport them to modern day Manhattan! It’s a fish out of water story where the characters find themselves confused by the everyday things we take for granted! That concept’s never been done before! (For films that have, to some extent, explored very similar concepts see: Blast From The Past, Coneheads, Crocodile Dundee, Elf, Enchanted, Encino Man, Hercules In New York, The Little Mermaid, Short Circuit, Thor… I think you get my point). I suppose I shouldn’t be to angry with the writers. I imagine they were just told to write a script for a Smurf movie and, honestly, what more could really be done with the concept?

So anyway, The Smurfs are transported to New York and end up staying with Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris) and Grace (Jayma Mays) Winslow and together the group learn important lessons about how important family is and how you’re more than just one defining characteristic, which may be true for humans but honestly seems to go against everything Smurf society is built on. In fact I imagine the sequel to this film involving Clumsy Smurf bringing this dangerous new philosophy back to the Smurf village and, in turn, starting a revolution against the dictatorial Papa Smurf who was the one who gave them all their predetermined roles in life in the first place. Yes, an encounter with human characters other than a one dimensional bad guy can only lead to the spilling of gallons of blue blood. Will the plucky rebels come out on top or will Papa Smurf be able to retain his iron grip on Smurf Society? Find out in ‘The Smurfs 2: Viva La Smurfolucion!’ coming in the summer of 2013.

Ahem. I seem to have gotten a little sidetracked. There are some amusing moments from the couples interaction with the blue demonspawn most of it stemming from Will’s absolute and completely understandable annoyance when it comes to the way that the Smurfs, well, just the way that the Smurfs are. He rails against them for randomly replacing words with the word Smurf. This makes sense because seriously CAN’T POSSIBLY MAKE ANY SENSE IF YOU USE THE WORD SMURF FOR EVERYTHING! VERBS, ADVERBS, NOUNS, PRONOUNS, PROFANITIES! IT DOESN’T MAKE ANY SENSE GRAMATICALLY OR LINGUISTICALLY! I mean, the last thing Patrick says to Grace is “Grace, I smurf you” which is either very sweet or a filthy and degrading insult. There ambiguity of the word Smurf means that there is no way to tell which.

He also points out just how fucking irritating the Smurfs theme tune is which they sing, whistle or hum a fuck load in this goddamn movie. If you’re lucky enough to have never heard the theme tune to the Smurfs, allow me to shatter that peaceful existence you one had and destroy the happiness that once dwelled in your heart:

Yeah, like I said, that theme just keeps coming back again and again and again. There is one time, near the end, where the song is used almost as a war chant a the creatures prepare for their showdown with Gargamel which was, admittedly, kinda inventive. So well done for that I guess.

Speaking of Gargamel, Hank Azaria is actually one of the movies small redeeming features, particularly near the beginning of the film. He also makes a few cracks about The Smurf way of life that everyone has discussed since they got old enough to realise just how fucking weird it was that the Smurfs lived in a village that only had one female. Unfortunately as the film goes on, Azaria gets more and more over the top and eventually becomes almost as irritating as the protagonists. As for the rest of the cast, well, there’s really only one person worth mentioning and that’s Sofia Vergara.

I don’t remember anything about her performance,

but she is worth mentioning.

So all in all, just how bad is ‘The Smurfs’? Well, it’s pretty fucking bad, I don’t know how well it would play for kids but really who cares because kids are idiots. If they weren’t then they wouldn’t get smarter as they got older. In terms of these CGI/live action reboots of old cartoon series though, it is better than the Chipmunk movies and the Transformers movies because whilst this film is awful, it does have some redeeming moments here and there and I didn’t feel totally mentally, physically and spiritually drained after watching it unlike those other franchises. On the other hand, it did have one of the worst blasphemies committed against music. The Smurfs replacing various words in ‘Walk This Way’ with word Smurf…Fuckers.

And that’s one of the big problems with these kinds of films. They take these innocent little cartoons that made up many of our childhoods and try and modernise them in a way that just seems tacky, out of place, completely unnecessary and it just reeks of a coroporate type’s idea of getting down with the kids in the most simplistic, basic and crass way possible. “What do kids like? Rap. Can we make the Smurfs rap? Excellent. That should sell a few more tickets.” All it actually ends up doing is to make the whole thing end up seeming like an empty shell of what it once was, putting as little effort as possible into what was once a beloved franchise in order to make a quick buck. And that’s sad… On the other hand:

The Smurfs gets one pint out of five.

Ugh. Why did I do it? Why did I sit down and force myself to watch this film? I hated the first one. I knew I would hate this one. Probably more because of A) The fucking stupid title and B) Because it’s a sequel (Yes, sequel. Not squeakquel, SEQUEL) to one of the most annoying, pointless and just plain shit movies that I have ever seen and sequels are rarely, rarely better than the first films especially when they are nothing more than blatant cash-grabs as this film so clearly is.

Plot synopsis? Well, Ok. Alvin, Simon and Theodore do stupid things and occasionally get in trouble but then they get out of it again. Also there are the girl chipmunks, The Chipettes, More than that? Fine. Dave (Jason Lee) gets injured in Paris during a Chipmunks concert and, after another accident involving Dave’s wheelchair bound aunt or grandmother (Yes, injuring old people in wheelchairs. The good wholesome family fun of the Alvin and the Chipmunks of my youth…), the three rodents find themselves in the care of Toby (Zachary Levi), who I guess is Dave’s cousin or something. Toby is a pathetic, loser of a manchild who spends all of his time playing video games and isn’t responsible to look after himself, let alone three talking chipmunks.

Dave has also decided that the Chipmunks need a normal childhood and so he’s sending them off to school which is one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard. Remember, these are chipmunks. I think we can pretty much safely assume that all of the world’s chipmunks are as intelligent as people in this film’s universe which means that they should probably have their own schools and things. In fact, this film would have been awesome if it had been about all the chipmunks coming out of the woods and trying to get equal rights. I suppose it wouldn’t have made a very good kids film but it’d be interesting.
Meanwhile the evil record producer from the first film, Ian (David Cross) has fallen on hard times since losing the deal with Alvin and Co. Luckily for him a package arrives containing the Chipettes and so he begins his attempted domination of the music industry all over again.

Back at school and all the girls go crazy over the fact that they have the superstars at their school and it seem as though they’d very much like the arboreal rodents to fuck them… No. I’m sorry, I’d done with an in depth synopsis. Basically, the school needs money to keep it’s music program going. Both the Chipmunks and the Chipettes enter a contest to help the school win the money and in the end they join forces. Oh, and Alvin briefly joins the football team and shirks the responsibilities of being in the group, much to Simon and Theodore’s chagrin. Oh, and David Cross loses the Chipettes, leaving him to pretend to be them with the aid of two sock puppets at a gig in the Staples Center. It might actually be the only funny bit in the entire film.

I really don’t know what can be said about this film. There’s so much to moan and bitch about here but it seems so futile since the third one will be out later this year and yes, I’ll probably end up watching that as well because I am a glutton for CGI rodent-based punishment. So I’ll just sum up several ridiculous points in some face book statuses written whilst watching it: “Wh-Why are the chipmunks going to high school? They gotta be abut 8 at the most… Which is about the average life expectancy of chipmunks in captivity so I assume this ends with Dave crying as they slowly die of old age.”, “Female CGI chipmunks should not be trying to be sexy. I need to burn my eyes out.”, “You’d think rodents would be excused from dodgeball…”, “WHY DOES EVERYONE LOVE THE CHIPMUNKS SINGING? IT SOUNDS LIKE HOW CHIPMUNKS MIGHT SOUND IF THEY COULD SING I.E. SQUEAKY AND NOT GOOD.”, “A CHIPMUNK CAN’T PLAY AMERICAN FOOTBALL! THERE ARE SEVERAL REASONS AS TO WHY THIS IS A FACT!” “You’re not good with heights? You’re an arboreal rodent, you fucking moron.” That’s just a small taste of the lunacy of this movie.

In summary, fuck this movie. It gets half a pint out of five and that’s for the ending with David Cross in drag. Laterz.