(This is a repost of a review from 17, February, 2011)

Nothing really too spoilery as far as I can tell. Still, be warned.

I’ve never seen the 60s Green Hornet show as far as I can remember. Never listened to any of the old radio shows and if there are or have been comic books as well then I’ve never read ‘em. Still, I have some knowledge of the characters involved simply due to the way that pop culture just generally seems to infect my brain. Still, I can’t say I was really anticipating this film but everything else good had already been seen and ‘True Grit’ wasn’t coming out for another week so what the hell.

The story is that Britt Reid (Played by Seth Rogen playing Seth Rogen) is the layabout, no good partying son of newspaper tycoon James (Tom Wilkinson). One day James is killed by a bee sting and Britt fires his mansions staff except for the maid. The next morning he finds that his coffee is not to his usual liking. He discovers that his father’s mechanic, Kato (Jay Chou) used to make the coffee. It turns out that Kato is a technological genius as well as a Master of the martial arts. Britt also inherits his father newspaper, a position which he doesn’t really want and decides to basically leave it in the hands of Mike Axford (Edward James Olmos playing a watered down version of William Adama if he worked at a newspaper).

Britt and Kato get hammered and come to the conclusion that both of them hated Britt’s father. They decide to cut the head of off his memorial statue but, during the process, they see a couple being mugged and the two leap into action to save them with Kato doing most of the actual saving thanks to his Kato vision (?) and his ability to make cars multiply or something (???). The two are mistaken for criminals themselves, which technically they are having just committed vandalism, and they flee the area.

Britt convinces Kato that they should join forces as a crime fighting duo who pose as criminals in order to get into the seedy criminal underworld of what ever city this is supposed to be… Los Angeles. Right… And also in order to protect the innocent people in there lives which, considering they’re both orphans who don’t seem to have any friends apart from each other, seems to be an odd reason. Britt uses his position at the newspaper, deciding he should take a more active role in the way it’s run, to raise the profile of the newly dubbed Green Hornet (a name which was thunk up by Kato after Britt suggested the name The Green Bee in a scene so hilarious I had to stab myself in the legs to prevent myself from laughing too hard… Yes. That was sarcasm… Actually to be fair that scene did include the one line which I probably laughed at the hardest involving blowing this man all out of proportion…)

Anyway, Britt hires Lenore Case (Cameron Diaz) to be his personal assistant after she comes in looking for a temp job. She has a degree in criminology and so Britt uses her to try and figure out what moves The Green Hornet should make next. This also begs the question as to why someone with a degree in criminology is seeking a temp job at a newspaper rather than doing some criminologying but whatever. And so The Green Hornet and Kato start blowing up meth labs much to the chagrin of local crime lord Benjamin Chudnofsky (Christoph Waltz playing a watered down version of the Jew Hunter if he was a crime lord rather than a Nazi).

That’ll do for the synopsis I reckon. Needless to say the villains and heros clash and more things occur. Also there’s a shitty kind of love triangle that develops between Britt, Kato and Lenore. You know, kind of like what happened with Peter Parker, Harry Osborne and Mary Jane Watson in Spider-Man 3. And I guess that’s my biggest problem with this film. It’s nothing that hasn’t been done before. If you want a film about an ordinary guy who decides he wants to be a superhero, you’ve got Kick Ass. If you want a film about a billionaire who can afford all kinds of shit to help him fight crime then you’ve got the Batman films. If you want a Seth Rogen comedy then you’ve got a lot better Seth Rogen films out there you could be watching instead.

Also, why the fuck is Michel Gondry directing this film? There where a few of his stylistic touches here and there like the aforementioned baffling car multiplying and an interesting kind of dream sequence type thing but other than that I honestly can’t think why he’d sign up for this. It was just… weird. And not in the good Michel Gondry weird way.

I will say this. The film was a little funnier than I expected but not really funny enough and then the action scenes just seemed to kind of bore me. There were interesting moments but overall the whole thing just seemed to fall a bit flat. Speaking of which, the 3D was utterly pointless. Two pints out of five. Laterz.

Oh, Kevin James. Kevin James, Kevin James, Kevin James. Those two words strike fear into my heart. I have never seen a film that starred Kevin James that was in anyway worth watching. It’s not fair to say I hate the man, though he certainly doesn’t make it any easier on himself by releasing shit like Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Zookeeper.

So it is with no small amount of trepidation that I watched The Dilemma, a film starring James, Vince Vaughan, Jennifer Connelly and Winona Ryder. It’s a relatively good cast, aside from James, to be fair though Vince Vaughan certainly has his off days. The basic premise of the story is that Nick (James) and Ronny (Vaughan) are two best friends and partners in an automobile engineering company. They’ve developed a new type of electrical engine which makes the noise of the muscle car engines of the past. They need to get all of the kinks out before a big meeting with Dodge that could make or break their company.

At the same time, Ronny is planning on proposing to his girlfriend Beth(Connelly) and whilst checking out the botanical gardens that he thinks will be the perfect place in which to do that, he spies Nick’s wife Geneva (Ryder) making out with a different man, Skip (Channing Tatum). This understandably shocks the fuck out of Ronny and he finds himself in the titular dilemma. Should he tell his best friend? Confront his cheating spouse? Would telling him bring more stress to a friendship that is already strained by the importance of the deal with Dodge? Yes, it certainly is a dilemma indeed.

Anyway, the rest of the film is filled with the kind of wacky misadventures that you’d probably expect from this kind of film, many of them ending with Ronny getting injured in some manner. I suppose the moral is if you don’t do the right thing then really you’re only hurting yourself. His sneaking around trying to catch Geneva out also has the unintended consequence of making all of his friends and family think that he has fallen back into an old gambling addiction that he apparently had. Still, this is a pretty formulaic film and I’m sure you can guess how the whole thing ends.

Along with all of these shenanigans, the movie seems to throw in dramatic and emotional scenes, creating tonal shifts that could cause whiplash. If there’s one thing I’ve learnt about movies in January it’s that they are generally released at this time because the studios don’t seem to have much faith in them and it seems to me as though the number one reason that they lack that faith is because the movies don’t seem to know what they want to be. I guarantee you that if this had just been a straight up comedy featuring James and Vaughan, it would have received a later release date. I’m not saying it would have been any good, it just would have been released later.

Perhaps the part of this movie that I enjoyed most was Channing Tatum. He is actually a genuinely funny guy and his few scenes in this film actually made me laugh more often than not. Good for him. He’s made me really kinda wanna go and see 21 Jump Street. Other than him though, the film, whilst not particularly terrible, isn’t in anyway recommendable either. On the whole, it was a little better than I thought it would be but not by a lot. There are major problems with the plot such as it being too formulaic, too predictable and it also doesn’t really address the fact that Beth’s infidelity isn’t her fault alone with Nick clearly having some part in the break down of the relationship. Maybe if you catch it on TV it might be worth a watch but that’s the only time I’d bother. Two pints out of five. Laterz.

Spoilers ahead.

Generally speaking, country music isn’t my thing. Sure there are exceptions but as a whole, it’s not something I can really get into. Add on top of that the fact that, outside of Iron Man, I’m not a massive fan of Gwyneth Paltrow. So it’s fair to say that Country Strong, the film starring Gwyneth Paltrow as an alcoholic country singer, is the least aimed at me film that could have possibly been made. Still, I made a commitment to sit down and watch all 200 or so movies listed on Wikipedia’s list of films released in 2011 and so I sat down and watched it.

The main gist of the story is that Gwyneth Paltrow is Kelly Canter, a famous country singer who is in rehab after falling over drunk whilst five months pregnant on her last tour. Whilst in rehab she begins an affair with Beau Hutton (Garrett Hedlund), an aspiring singer/songwriter, but her husband/manager James (Tim McGraw) takes her out of rehab early in an effort to get her to tour again and rebuild her reputation. He also picks up Chiles Stanton (Leighton Meester) to support her on the tour and, having seen them perform together, he decides to take Beau along as well, under the pretense that he’s also there to look after Kelly as her rehab sponsor.

So during the tour, Kelly gets drunk and either misses or fucks up the show. She also grows increasingly jealous of Chiles and increasingly resentful of Beau and James. Due to her constant inability to perform, it’s more and more up to Chiles and Beau to keep the tour going and so they find themselves becoming more and more famous and eventually they fall in love. Anyway, Kelly finally cleans herself up for the last big show and knocks it out of the park. Everyone is happy and things look like they’re gonna finally be OK. And then Kelly kills herself with an overdose. Beau moves on to California to work on a ranch and play his music for the love of music, man, and eventually Chiles joins him.

Christ, I know that there was more than that in the film and I literally watched it a little while ago but my mind is mostly drawing a blank. This film was so cliché, so by the numbers and so incredibly, incredibly boring. Even the big shock ending wasn’t a shock. Of course Kelly was gonna die. I’d be more shocked if she’d finally sorted herself out and did good.

Also the main point of this story seems to be that you can have fame or you can have love but you can’t have both. Really? Maybe if your husband is also your manager and so both your incomes rely on you but I’m fairly sure there are famous people who have managed to handle having both.

I suppose if I can say something good, it’s that everyone seems to be trying really hard and everyone’s singing there own songs and doing pretty well at it as far as my ear for country music goes but honestly, this film is just so… meh that I really can’t recommend it. Half a pint out of five. Laterz.

Spoilers ahead.

Starting a new little project on this blog and going to try and watch every film released in 2011 (at least as listed on Wikipedia) and as luck would have it, I must begin with a Nicolas Cage film. Now normally I like to do a video review of Cage’s films but I’m having some technical issues in that department so I have to resort to something barbaric like typing out the words with my fingers rather than speaking them with my mouth parts. Enough of my problems, on to the review!

The film opens during the crusades which were apparently fought by quipping Americans who may or may not be trying to do English-esque accents. I honestly can’t tell if Nicolas Cage is trying speak with an English accent and just failing or if it’s just the way his voice goes when he’s trying to speak in somewhat faux Olde English. Ron Perlman, on the other hand, doesn’t even seem to bother and honestly, his performance is more enjoyable because of it. Anyway, the two Crusadery chums are hacking their way through battles, killing for God and drinking with wenches and just generally having as good a time as two knights can. After a while though, they come to the realisation that they aren’t just killing deserving infidel warriors but also women and children too. They decide that enough is enough and leave the Crusades and go on the run as deserters.

So they find themselves wandering around medieval Europe. What are they doing? Well, that’s never really explained. Probably going from village to village and righting wrongs where they can. That’s the ind of shit that righteous outlaws are always doing from Robin Hood to The A-Team. Anyway, they come across a kingdom blighted by the plague where they are recognised and arrested. However they are given a holy quest by a plague-ridden Christopher Lee (in one of the more bizarre cameo appearances in film history). The quest is to deliver an alleged witch to a monastery where a rite will be performed that will remove the curse of the plague. Cage is reticent to sign up and work for the church again but ultimately relents in exchange for a guarantee that the accused witch will receive a fair trial and that he and Perlman are given full pardons.

They are accompanied on their quest by a priest, the unfortunately named Debelzaq, a swindler/merchant named Hagamar, another knight whose own land has been ravaged by the plague, causing him to lose his daughter, named Ulrich and a young aspiring knight Kay. They set off and, honestly, not much actually happens on the way. There’s a few deaths and few things which are possibly meant to make you wonder if the girl actually has supernatural powers or not whilst actually makes it pretty fucking obvious that she has supernatural powers. What happens could best be described as dude gets stabbed, there’s a rickety bridge on which no one dies, some demon wolves and then bam. They’re at the monastery.

There are bad things afoot at the monastery however! Apparently the plague has struck there too and it’s down to Debelzaq to try and perform the rite to sort out the witch. But bad things are afoot inside the girls body! It turns out that she’s not a witch at all but she is, in fact, possessed by bad CGI Satan! So any chance of this being in anyway interesting is almost immediately lost, any hint that maybe the girl wasn’t supernatural and was perhaps just crazy is instantly gone (though they would have had to explain a shit lot of the stuff that happened earlier if they had gone that route). What we’re left with is a final battle between our main cast and some poor special effects. Ugh.

So where exactly did this film go wrong? Well, there’s the cheap look which renders everything just a little unbelievable, the poor writing and somewhat stilted acting but the biggest problem is the constant shift in tone. This film doesn’t know what it wants to be. Does it want to be a buddy action comedy? A psychological thriller? A straight up supernatural horror? Don’t get me wrong, tonal shifts in movies can work but not when they seem to be happening every time there’s a scene change. It’s just comes off as jarring.

Was there anything good about the film? Well, this isn’t the worse that Cage has been and he isn’t exactly bad at playing the repentant, world-weary warrior but you can’t help but feel a little disappointed that Cage isn’t playing it a little crazier given the setting. Also Perlman’s entertaining but he’s taken being entertaining in cheesy bullshit and turned it into an art form.

At the end of the day those two points aren’t really enough to recommend the movie to anyone really. I will say that there are entertaining moments but they are very few and far between and most of them are quite near the beginning of the film. Overall I can’t in good conscience give this more than one pint out of five. Laterz.

This review is spoiler-free.

For around five years or so now, Marvel has been laying the groundwork for what many had hoped would be the greatest comic book movie event of all time. I speak, of course about The Avengers (or Avengers Assemble as it’s known here in the UK so that our simple British minds don’t confuse it with the Patrick Macnee starring series from the 60s of the same name).

From Iron Man in 2008 all the way up to Captain America last year, everything has been leading up to this and the question on everyone’s lips was could a film of this magnitude, bringing such a wide cast of characters, possibly live up to the hype?

Well, the answer in this humble comic book and movie geek’s opinion is an emphatic yes. I don’t think it could be a more emphatic yes if I had taken some kind of emphatic-enhancing drug that gave me powers of emphacy far beyond that of a mere mortal man. Is emphacy even a real word? I don’t give a fuck. That’s just how emphatic I am.

So where to begin with a film that I find hard to express in words the level of awesome that it was? Well one of the major advantages that this film has over other comic book films is that it doesn’t have to waste much time explaining any of the characters origins. It starts assuming that you’ve seen the films that preceded it and so get’s on with the job it’s there to do, dealing with the origins of the team itself which is a far more entertaining kind of origin story due to the interplay of the characters involved.

This interplay is where much of the humour in the film comes from. This is undoubtedly a Joss Whedon film. It’s as witty as any of his work before and he once again proves that he is possibly one of the best directors going when it comes to putting together an ensemble cast and making it work. Some of the characters do get a little less to do than others, Hawkeye and Maria Hill for instance, but as a whole it’s incredibly well balanced.

There is one character who does stand out and nearly steals the show, the big green bastard himself,
The Hulk. On his surface The Hulk is a deceptively simple character. Mild mannered scientist gets mad and turns into a giant jade rage monster. It’s Jekyll and Hyde for the modern age. Most portrayals of Bruce Banner have played the tortured and tormented aspect of the character to the fullest but Mark Ruffalo does something a little different with him. Yes, he is still haunted by the green spectre of his other self but this is a Banner who’s been living with this for a good few years now and seems to have somewhat accepted his curse, even being able to control it somewhat, and can banter wittily with Tony Stark with the best of them. He also seems to be somewhat glad to have found a place for himself amongst the other Avengers whilst still being rightfully afraid of what his alter-ego would do if he emerged hundreds of feet in the sky on the Helicarrier.

The rest of the actors are all on fine form as their respective characters as well. Tony Stark is still his arrogant, funny self whilst still seeming to have matured a lot since his first film outing. Captain America is still coming to terms with being a man out of time, finding himself frequently frustrated by the phrases and technology around him and perhaps even a little freaked out by Agent Coulson’s hero worship of him. Thor is the same Thor we saw at the end of his film, a little more humble and a little more understanding of humanity whilst being conflicted about his brother’s treachery. And Loki is still as greasy and Machiavellian as he’s always been.

It’s the two main SHIELD agents who perhaps get the most revealed about them. We finally see the people that Nick Fury has to answer to and just how much he is willing to disobey them and just how far he is willing to go to prove his team worthy. Black Widow is also far more fleshed out here than she ever was in Iron Man 2 and we are given several hints about her dark past and her ties to Hawkeye.

Speaking, as I was, of The Hulk and the Helicarrier earlier, it’s probably good to mention the effects here. They are, in a word, incredible. The Hulk looks like he’s there and actually looks like the actor portraying him. Every CGI shot in this film is beautiful and just helps to build a believable world where these characters could exist and these events take place. As for the 3D, it’s good as post-conversion jobs go but doesn’t really add anything to the experience. There’s also the issue of the glasses making things kinda difficult to make out when scenes take place in dark places.

The only real weak spot in the entire film is Loki’s army and the story itself. The army are really nothing more than an obstacle for the heroes to fight and smash and the story is your basic alien invader story but for once, that doesn’t really matter. What’s important here isn’t so much the story but the things that surround that threadbare story skeleton. The meat is the characters themselves, their interactions and how they grow individually and together over the course of the films 143 minutes running time.

Well, that’s about all I have to say without getting in to spoiler territory. If you enjoy comic books, comic book movies and in particular the Marvel movies that have come before this go and see it. Go and see it now. If you are working, scream I quit at the top of your lungs, walk out and see it. I’m sure once you explain your actions later you’ll be able to get your job back. Just see it. Five pints out of five. Laterz.

Terrance Malick is truly a remarkable film maker who seems to have aimed to achieve the impossible and with ‘The Tree of Life’ has reached that goal. Terrance Malick has made dinosaurs boring. For that alone my hat goes off to him.

The Tree of Life features just about everything you could possibly want from an overblown, wanky meditation on existence. Troubled childhood and the conflict caused by being raised by two people with differing personalities? Check. Questioning of God? Check. Endless shots of a variety of things such as trees and skyscrapers at annoying angles? Check. The birth of the universe and consequent evolution of life? Check. A score largely made up of classical music? Check. Breathy, barely audible mumbling passed off as narration? Check. A narrative which may have made sense at one point until it was decided to run it through a machine that seems to edit things together almost randomly? Check. I think you get my point.

What’s the plot of The Tree of Life? Well, that’s a good fucking question. Basically Sean Penn is an architect thinking back to his childhood in 50s Waco, Texas and trying to figure out the kind of person he wants to be. Does he want to follow the path of nature like his somewhat brutish father or the path of grace like his eternally loving mother? Oh, also his brother is dead for some reason that apparently relates to the “plot” somehow. Whilst his reminiscing we are shown some shots of the universe being created for some reason and then dinosaurs happen. For about one goddamn minute dinosaurs happen. And they do nothing. A young parasaurolophus lies down by a riverbed whilst a theropod of some description comes along, treads on it’s head and walks away. And that’s it. What was the point of this? Again, good fucking question.

After the brief interlude of the entire fucking universe being created, we get back to the humans and something resembling a story starts to develop. Turns out that Sean Penn’s father, Brad Pitt, was a bit of an asshole when he was younger and expected nothing but the best from him and his two brothers. Fair enough to be honest. After all the trio do seem to be somewhat in need of a touch of discipline as they seem to enjoy spending their idyllic 50s summer days breaking windows and blowing up frogs. What a bunch of assholes. So you get random scene after random scene of these assholes doing assholey things and then Sean Penn walks through a desert for a bit where he meets a bunch of people from his memory and we’re all supposed to be happy. Or something. Oh and occasionally someone whispers a bit of dialogue which the audience strains to hear.

The film is a ponderous exercise in tedium and there was an actual audible sigh of relief from the group of people I was essentially forcing to watch it with me. I’m sure there’s a deep, important message about just what it means to be alive or some bullshit like that in there somewhere and I’m probably an uncultured dolt for not being able to find it but I’m quite happy being an uncultured dolt if it means not having to watch pretentious wankery such as this. Hell, I’d rather watch an Adam Sandler marathon than ever, ever watch this film again. Recent Sandler. I’m sure that the whole thing is incredibly personal and meaningful to Malick himself and if it is then maybe he should just edit his childhood home movies into an incomprehensible mess whilst he whispers over the top of it. Then he can watch it at home, by himself as many times as he wants. Just don’t release it for public viewing.

Yes, It’s all very pretty and the classical music is all very nice but it feels like it’s literally trying too hard to get just the right look and feel of an artsy, pretentious film which it certainly succeeds at. I’m sure there are some people out there who think that this was a work of art, a realisation of just what can be achieved through the medium of film. Hell, I’m not sure, I know. A quick glance at the internet hass essentially proven that.

If there’s one film I can really compare this to, it’s ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’. The style and themes are similar but 2001 is a far, far superior film. 2001 may be a little slow but at least it contains a coherent plot which it can hang all of it’s metaphysics on. Also it has a homicidal computer which is just awesome.

So in summary, theirs is really no way I could recommend this to any member of the average of the movie going public or humans in general. Except for maybe Terrance Malick. I bet he’d love it. Zero pints out of five. Laterz.

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.