Fifty Shades of Grey – Richards Reckons Review

Fifty Shades of Grey is a cultural phenomenon. Whether you’ve read the book or not (and whether you can admit that you’ve read it or you’re one of those “oh my FRIEND has read it” people), everybody has heard of it and has at least a general idea what it’s about – girl meets rich man who is into BDSM and other kinky little ventures. It sounds saucy with a dash of “oh blimey” and a pinch of “ooh matron” if you’re that was inclined; a sex and lust fuelled erotic romp that took the world by storm, with women (and indeed some men) proclaiming from the rooftops that they were waiting for “their Mr Grey” because he’s “the perfect man”. So when a film adaptation of this sultry collection of bound tree shavings was announced, the world went mad – some with anticipation, some with dread. But how is the end product?

Just in case you want more of the plot, here it is; the superhero/secret-agent-ish-named Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) is an English Literature student who one day fills in for her sick roommate by going to interview extremely wealthy businessman Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan). After their initial meeting, Grey appears at the hardware store where she works (like a stalkery, well dressed vampire), and arranges a photoshoot and then coffee. After he finds her acceptable, he asks her to sign a contract; the deal being that she is essentially his submissive sexual slave to be bound up and have his way with her whenever she pleases, and in return she gets, in his words (well, word), “him”. And a nice room with big windows. But is that enough, and will Ana find a “normal” relationship within Christian’s grasp?

Before I get to anything else, I’ll say this; for a film all about lust, urges and sexual relations of the kinky kind, Fifty Shades of Grey really quite boring.

It’s dull. It starts out with really hamfisted bantering between the two ladened with innuendo that is as subtle as an aeroplane with a banner saying “THEY ARE GOING TO HAVE SEX IN THIS FILM!!!!!”. There’s a similar approach to metaphoric imagery – Ana with a Christian Grey pencil near her lips and mouth (essentially that aeroplane again saying “IT’S A SUBSTITUTE PENIS!!!”); Ana quite literally getting wet in the rain after seeing Christian for the first time (that aeroplane again saying… well, I don’t really need to explain that). It’s all a bit in your face, really, preluding what’s to come. When they do come, the sex scenes are few and far between, and when they’re there they lack impact; they’re actually ironically quite constrained, as if THEY’VE been bound and gagged too. All the action seems to happen in the peripheral vision of the camera, and while it’s cut nicely it’s not exactly… exciting, really. I also find it bizarre that the film so liberally shows female nudity but not male – it’s peenophobic, if you will. That’s usually the case but with a film about such sexual freedom it seems so contradictory and bizarre. So if you’re looking for fun or gratification from those scenes, then you won’t find it.

Secondly, there’s little to no chemistry at all between the two leads. Ana seems to do this weird and annoying thing I’ve rarely come across in real life where if Christian Grey blinks or exhales carbon dioxide towards her she seems to automatically bite her lip and have a small sensual reaction to it akin to a When Harry Met Sally scene; maybe either 1) she’s actually got some sort of hyper-orgasmic allergic reaction to his musk or 2) the writers are trying to use it as some sort of shortcut to electricity between them, which doesn’t work. Dakota Johnson, coincidentally, is the best thing about the film – bringing a lot of vulnerability as well as power to the main role.

She doesn’t have a lot to work with here either, with the dialogue being so unbelievably poor that I sighed at a lot of lines. This is almost definitely due to the original author, EL James, being present on set and vetoing any kind of diversion away from the (legendarily poorly written) source material. There are a couple of lines that get laughs that you can just tell are additions because they add spark. When Jamie Dornan is forced to say things like “I don’t make love. I f*ck… hard”, “laters baby” and “I’m fifty shades of f*cked up” (get it? It’s ALMOST the movie title!) it gets giggles more than swoons because of just how badly worded it is, bordering on parody. It doesn’t help either that Jamie Dornan doesn’t really seem like he’s trying with Christian at all – he has money, sure, and is into BDSM (Grey that is, not Dornan, I don’t know him that well), but he has little to no personality whatsoever as Christian Grey.

Which finally brings me to perhaps my biggest problem with the film; Christian Grey himself. He’s a big part of the film, what with his name being in the ruddy title and all. He’s presented as this loveable dreamboat of a man who has it all; money, looks, a nice body (if that’s what you’re into)… more money. But he lacks a personality – and, more than that, his behaviour is absolutely abhorrent. He’s a possessive stalker who just “turns up” where Ana is (whether it’s her workplace, a nightclub, HER HOME or in ANOTHER STATE) as if he’s apparated there (probably from Knockturn Alley) without her consent and often demands sex from her; he physically fights off any other male who even talks to her; he, through the contract, restrains her from her own free will – not letting her drink or eat or go where she wants without his permission. And all of this is presented as if it’s like a charming quirk and part of the BDSM – which it is NOT, at all. It makes his behaviour seem acceptable rather than what it is; creepy, horrifying and abusive.

In summary (or TLDR as the kids say), while it looks good (props to director Sam Taylor-Johnson for trying her hardest from the source material) and nicely monochromatic and has an admittedly very good soundtrack (Beyonce and Haim’s turns are particularly good), Fifty Shades of Grey is a dull and often creepy piece of work featuring two main characters who have no chemistry and varying levels of quality in their performances (Johnson good, Dornan not so). You get the feeling that this is the best they could have gotten without rewriting the dialogue from the source (which they would have done if it weren’t for EL James), but it’s still not enough to leave the target audience or myself satisfied.

Big Hero 6, Inherent Vice & Trash – Richards Reckons Reviews

An inflatable personal healthcare assistant, a near-permanently stoned private detective and three young Brazilian boys are all in cinemas this week. What a crazy world it is beyond that big silver window.

Let’s start with Big Hero 6.

Big Hero 6 is the latest fruit to blossom from the acquisition of Marvel properties by the big dogs at Disney (they’re not literally dogs. Well, I don’t think so anyway – that said I’ve never seen them and dogs in the same room at the same time…). Based on a Marvel comic book series (but NOT part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe), Big Hero 6 follows a young man from San Fransokyo called Hiro (Ryan Potter), a gifted child prodigy who graduated high school at 13. Since then, he’s been making money illegal bot fighting in the backstreets. His brother Tadashi (Daniel Henney) introduces him to his university robotics lab, as well as his friends Wasabi (Damon Wayans Jnr), Fred (TJ Miller), GoGo (Jamie Chung) and Honey Lemon (Genesis Rodriguez). He also introduces him to his invention; a personal healthcare companion designated to helping and healing people named Baymax (Scott Adsit). After Hiro witnesses his microbot inventions being used for evil after he thought he lost them forever, he and Baymax assemble a team together (as well as creating several “upgrades” along the way) to try to get them back.

Big Hero 6 is the latest movie from Disney and the successor to the insanely popular (and in my opinion massively overrated but that’s just me) Frozen, so it has big ol’ chilly boots to fill. And, in my opinion, it’s an absolutely resounding success in doing so. When I saw Big Hero 6 for the second time, I decided to buy a little cup with Baymax on the top of it. When strolling back home afterwards, kids would point at it and identified who it was right away, asking their guardians to get their own bits of merchandise. This is after the movie had been out for LESS THAN A WEEK. Mark my words, Baymax and co. will be everywhere soon, and for good reason.

Firstly, the colourful characters are all wonderful – each of them have their own distinct personality traits that makes them all gel together nicely as well as differ enough to become instantly recognisable. Each member of the Big Hero 6 team is loveable and fun in their own way, from catchphrases (GoGo’s “woman up!” spin on the classic phrase is particularly fantastic) to later powers. But special kudos goes to Hiro and Baymax for being such a great team – and despite the fact that one of them is a robot, they both have real growth and real character arcs.

In fact, in some respects that I obviously cannot go into, the film itself can actually be heartbreaking. Especially towards its climax, where it contains some of the most touching moments I’ve seen for a long time in animation. Any film that can conjure up these emotions in a 23 year old man (even if I am a bit of a softie) deserves emotional plaudits really. But don’t be fooled by that; the script is bubbling over with witty dialogue and jokes, as well as brilliantly timed physical comedy (the sight of Baymax walking in his armour is among the most hilarious in the film itself).

I mean, sure, the plot is contrived within an inch of its life, has twists which are pretty easily foreseeable and it doesn’t seem original – but it’s such a touching, dynamically told version of a super-heroic team up narrative that you just don’t mind that. Tears will be shed in the cinema, both from laughing and crying, but it’s such a fun adventure to go on that it’s well worth your eyes leaking. Directors Don Hall and Chris Williams have done a fantastic job here in crafting such a lovely movie that’s fun and dazzling along the way. A truly enjoyable experience.

Also I really want to visit San Fransokyo. It looks amazing.

Onto Inherent Vice.

Right, where do I start with THIS plot summary. Bear with me here. So, Inherent Vice follows Doc Sportello (Joaquin Phoenix), a private detective living in Los Angeles in 1970 who also happens to be a near permanently stoned hippie. One day, he is visited by his rather floaty ex-girlfriend Shasta (Katherine Waterston). She explains that she has a new lover by the name of Mickey Wolfman (Eric Roberts) and how his wife supposedly has a plot to get him abducted and committed to an asylum. He also seems to be hired by a character played by Michael K. Williams to find somebody he was in prison with. And then also by an ex-heroin addict played by Jena Malone to find her husband who she fears is dead (played by Owen Wilson). Oh and also Josh Brolin is in there as his supposed nemesis. And Benicio Del Toro appears as… I’m not even sure. And Reese Witherspoon is a deputy DA who is having an affair with Doc who appears in the film in about two scenes. There’s also some dentists and a gang called the “Golden Fang”.

So, yes, as you can tell from that, the plot of Inherent Vice isn’t really there – it just trundles and wanders through its own chaotic narrative much like Doc wanders through everything. The narrative is like smoke – thick, marijuana-tinged smoke which is disorientating and delirious. All of this sounds like a good description of a thrilling, hallucinogenic cinema ride, but it isn’t.

It’s incredibly annoying and tedious.

From reading reviews by critics that I for the most part normally agree with, I thought I was in the wrong here somehow (well, as far as having your own opinion CAN be wrong). But it’s not just me; audiences all over the country have apparently been walking out of the movie before it’s finished – a phenomena that, especially in the economic climate with cinema prices the way they are, just doesn’t happen very often anymore. Walking out partway through a film is not something that I personally agree with but I can totally see why they did it too – there’s no sense of resolve or continuity to the film whatsoever, and that’s what is so frustrating about it. The characters mumble their dialogue at an irritatingly slow pace, making pointless scenes feel like they drag on even longer. Paul Thomas Anderson feels like he is trying to create a sort of psuedo-comedic, bohemian stoner thriller but it moves at such a slow pace and is so frankly badly told that it sets the audience against it after a while and wears them down, down, deeper and down until they want it to end. Or so it seems, anyway.

There are a couple of good sequences in here, and Joaquin Phoenix plays the role of Doc very well with a very dazed touch with a surprising amount of physical comedy, but overall for me Inherent Vice felt like an aesthetically pretty but far too long, drawn out, and pretentious mess which is far from a joy to watch. There are a range of characters played by a range of different and talented actors but too many of them feel one-note and dropped in purely for the sake of being convoluted. There’s an interesting critic/audience divide here it seems (with some very condescending, “aw-bless-you-don’t-like-it-because-you-don’t-understand-it” reactions from the former to the latter), but on this one I side with the audience.

Now onto Trash.

Trash is the tale written by Richard Curtis of three Brazilian street kids named Raphael, Gardo and Rato (Rickson Tevez, Eduardo Luis and Gabriel Weinstein). They sort through heaps of rubbish every day in order to find anything valuable to help them out. One day, they find a wallet which apparently contains more than they bargained for – setting them on a collision course conspiracy against the corrupt Rio de Janeiro police force and political powers. They’re helped on their quest for the truth by aid workers Father Juliard (Martin Sheen) and Sister Olivia (Rooney Mara – no, this character has NO dragon tattoo). But can they escape the brutal police force and get justice before they get caught?

Trash is mostly in Portuguese, with English only appearing occasionally almost as a courtesy – I’m glad that it is mostly in Portuguese as it adds to the authenticity of the film. It’s one of those films where it’s so well established and so well performed by the young cast that you feel like you’re there with them – director Stephen Daltrey makes an amazing job of transferring you to the action alongside these three young boys, making you root for them even harder. It may be marketed like Slumdog Millionaire but this is a much grittier affair, with a real sense of mortal danger for these kids no matter where they go.

The three central performances are fantastic and really do steal the show away from Rooney Mara and Martin Sheen. The only weakness in the film’s bow is its somewhat strange ending which doesn’t quite tie everything up as well as it could do. However, the ride to get there is dark yet strangely exhilarating, especially in some of its on-foot chase segments from the big bad policemen through favelas and train stations. An exciting and aspirational story of escaping the gutter and taking on oppression and corruption.

Mortdecai – Richards Reckons Review

Charlie Mortdecai (Johnny Depp) is a character that will be studied for a long, long time. His every move, however minimal, will the analysed; from the way he delivers the dialogue, to even the way he breathes and traverses the space around him. Every machination to his existence will be under the microscope. Why, I hear you ask?

Because Charlie Mortdecai is the definition of anti-comedy.

Everything he does is so disastrously unfunny that it’s actually, in a way, fascinating. His character has absolutely no redeeming qualities of any kind and is essentially skin deep; he is nothing but a moustache and a horrendously over-boiled accent that grates on you more than a, er, cheese grater. He’s also so zany and so off the wall that it becomes irritating – a quality that Johnny Depp was remarkably good at fails miserably here, to the point that you wish the hitmen in the opening scene had actually followed through with their threat to save the rest of the movie from ever happening.

Anyway, the rest of it – Mortdecai tells the story of Charlie Mortdecai, an English arts dealer who does a bit of black market naughtiness as and when it suits him. He is married to Joanna (Gwyneth Paltrow), who gags at his moustache and is mostly there for that sole purpose, and as a quasi-love interest. A woman is restoring a painting but gets shot while doing so, and Inspector Martland (Ewan McGregor) wants to know why – he enlists the help of Mortdecai and his manservant Jock Strapp (Paul Bettany) to track the painting down. There’s also some stuff about Russian gangsters that crops up occasionally too. That’s about it, really – the rest of it is just excuses for Mortdecai to turn up somewhere, dick about and then leave again.

It’s very rare that I see a film and not laugh once, but this makes an exception. Through its writing that is trying to hard to pick up an “ooh matron!” vibe, it tries so so hard but the jokes and innuendo (which normally I find quite amusing) just fall to the floor like a sack of unfunny potatoes. It wasn’t just me either – the screen I was in was half full (feeling optimistic, clearly) and I think there would have been more laughs if we were just shown a live feed of a drain for 90 minutes. Johnny Depp is by far the worse offender here, but the others too just aren’t funny at all – which it pains me to say as I actually quite like all the actors in it, ordinarily.

Mortdecai ultimately is a black hole of comedy, joy and entertainment. It sucks it all out of you like a big Dementor’s kiss from the screen and leaves you desperate for it to be over so you can leave and forget any of it ever happened – and I’m sure that everybody involved with the movie feels exactly the same way…

Black Sea, Get Santa and Men, Women & Children – Richards Reckons Reviews

That title is a bit confusing, granted, but I’ve never used the Oxford comma and hell, I’m not gonna start now. So no, the second film isn’t “Get Santa and Men”, that’s an entirely different film which I’m sure is available to order on DVD from some online black market store.

ANYWAY, first things first (I’m the realest), Black Sea.

Blimey Jude, alright, we’ll get there.

Black Sea is not just about Felixstowe’s beaches; in fact, it doesn’t even reference them. Nay, Black Sea follows a man named Robinson (Jude Law, the originally J-Law), who has been made redundant after being a submariner with a shipping salvage company for over 20 years, and after basically losing his family to the job too. So he’s a bit hacked off. He then gets a tip off about a sunken U-Boat from World War 2 filled with Nazi gold waiting in the, well, black sea of Crimea. So he gathers a half Russian, half British team (with a cowardly American and a psychopathic Australian thrown in for good measure) in a rusty old Russian sub to salvage the gold; however a number of problems occur, especially when friction between the Russian and British submates starts to come into fruition…

Director Kevin Macdonald, whose work includes The Last King of Scotland, uses the submarine setting very well indeed; emphasising the claustrophobic environment by seldom leaving it at all. Even when we do leave the sub, it’s only to see the exterior; never above the surface. It positions you, as a viewer, in the submarine itself and makes you feel as trapped, cabin feverish and smelly (just the bloke sat near me then?) as the men onboard the sub itself. In turn, this makes the tension ramping up feel very close to home, and just as impactful.

The performances here are all very solid, including from J-Law Mk 1 as the surprisingly level-headed captain scotsman (whose accent very occasionally can drift into bum notes). All the crew portray the bubbling tension very well (some, of course, more hotheaded than others), never reaching cartoonish levels of anger. There’s an underlying social commentary on how the men of the Navy are treated after their stints and are proverbially thrown on the scrapheap of life, so to speak. There are shots of job centres, rants about poverty, various twists and “the man” to back this up, so it’s hardly subtle but it’s still a reasonable subtext to have.

While Black Sea lacks, er, fun and laughs, it’s heavy on character, pressure and setpieces; it has all the bearings of a heist movie, except underwater and in a pressure-cooker environment. Just as the rusty pipes clang and various parts blow up, the men grow more and more desperate; both for their money and for their lives. The film is a very well shot, solid descent into what happens when human beings, who have been treated badly by the system anyway, are pushed to their very limits.

Next, it’s Get Santa!

You may think from the title alone that Get Santa is solely about getting santa, but not in the “get ’em boys!” sense. And you’d be absolutely right, yes, but there is more to it than that. Just a few days before Christmas, Santa (Jim Broadbent) crashes his sled, leading to his reindeer being spotted roaming about London, and the man himself taking refuge in the garden of young Tom (Kit Connor). His father Steve (Rafe Spall) is a getaway driver who has just got out of prison, and is roped in to help Santa by his son after he is sent to prison for trying to rob his reindeers back from Battersea Dog’s Home. While Santa tries to convince people of his identity and survive jail, can Steve and Tom track down everything in time and save Christmas?

Bizarrely, this is produced by Ridley Scott, and is directed by Christopher Smith of Brit horrorfests Creep and Severance fame, so it’s quite a change of pace from the norm for them. Even with these names on board, after Nativity 3: Dude, Where’s My Sanity?, I was somewhat trepidatious when it came to this movie; that it would have all the cringeworthy, gurning and just awful beats that it had, becoming an embarrassment to the British film industry. And while it’s not a shining light and a stone cold classic Christmas movie, Get Santa is a warm and funny enough diversion from Christmas shopping to warrant having a watch.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, the story is ridiculous, and to begin with actually quite hard edged. Prison, a criminal father and an apparently messy divorce don’t exactly scream “HOORAY YAY CHRISTMAS!” straight away, and nor do the admittedly quite bleak colour tones towards the beginning. But, when it gets there, it’s quite a colourful affair; playing with and using the Northern lights and “Lapland” to good effect. The somewhat ludicrous story is actually a touchstone of most Christmas movies in themselves, so it’s to be expected, and the plot holes may be papered over by Christmassy wrapping paper but they’re still there.

Rafe Spall and Jim Broadbent shine in this in their roles as the somewhat dodgy but well meaning father and Santa himself, with Jim Broadbent in particular being an “Ah eureka!” moment of casting. Stephen Graham, Warwick Davies and Jodie Whittaker are also all on good form here but are somewhat overused. There are the odd jokes that make you chuckle (such as Santa walking in slow mo down the prison corridors to the tones of the NWA, or the odd japes with the police), but nothing is really gutbustingly hilarious or all out moving to tears.

All in all then, Get Santa has some unique points to it (pour example the giant letterboxes for all santa’s letters), and a funny enough concept with good casting to get it through, but it doesn’t have enough originality or family laughs per minute to quite reach the absolute Christmas classic level of Elf, Muppet Christmas Carol or Die Hard (yes, Die Hard is a Christmas film, watch it again and tell me otherwise). So if you fancy seeing a family Christmas film and Paddington is sold out, you could do a lot worse than Get Santa.

Right, finally then, Men, Women & Children.

So, what is this extremely vaguely titled film about? Well, it follows a series of stories that intertwine with one another in a small way; mainly, it’s about families with teenage kids who all go to the same high school. The film examines their problems and issues in relation to the internet and their technology. It includes, and isn’t limited to, anorexia, porn addiction, extra marital sex and cyber smothering.

So heavy stuff there, obviously, with such massive relevance in this day and age. Writer and director Jason Reitman has given us some very good movies in the past too, with Juno and Up in the Air under his belt. And with a high quality cast and some fairly slick visuals to boot, this story is gonna be good, right? Riight…?

Wrong.

It’s a massive disappointment.

First off, the stories – it makes a narrative choice to keep five story plates spinning at the same time that intertwine with each other rather than have the episodically, which is very brave, as they all reach their crescendos. But it just doesn’t work. Some stories get lost in the mix, others climax (stop laughing) at times when others don’t and therefore undermine one another. The stories themselves, too, are all very undeveloped and stale (and often ridiculous). It all feels a bit like Reitman has stuck his storytelling fork into a bowl of quite poor narrative spaghetti and has slopped down the tangled and confused mess onto a plate and said “there you go, eat that!”.

Some of the stories are based on good ideas and themes, but it just all feels a bit… preachy and tell-offy. “The internet is bad… sometimes!” is the vibe it tends to give off; a completely confused message that is very selective and ham-fisted. It feels like a film that desperately wants to say something but has absolutely no idea what – simultaneously condemning internet freedom and internet restriction. The performances are actually very good, and I must say that Adam Sandler is actually, for once, one of the best bits of it, as he is good in this (I know!). But the writing and dialogue is all so poor and often boring that even the good performances swallow themselves like a black hole of tedium. As soon as you see Ansel Egort’s trembly little lips you can tell pretty much exactly what is going to happen in his mumblecore story segment, as you can with frankly a lot of them. It is literally just some stuff happening, some nonsensical, which have a small relation to the internet.

Men, Women & Children is a long, confused, preachy, modern-while-old-fashioned, boring and predictable disappointment from Reitman. Even the wonderful Emma Thompson gives her voice over with a degree of “why am I doing this?” in her tones as she speaks over a satellite drifting around space (yep, seriously, it’s bookended by space). Don’t bother.

Nightcrawler, Love Rosie & The Book of Life – Richards Reckons Review

BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! No, I am not booing you, but rather I am booing AT you rather like a ghost would. For it is Halloween, and for Halloween, here are the reckonings for, er, one dark drama, a romcom and an animated family adventure. Scary times.

Let’s kick off by trawling through the underbelly of nighttime Los Angeles with Nightcrawler*.

There’s a plot here bleeding and therefore leading (if you’ve seen the trailer, that joke makes a lot of sense and you’re probably laughing literally right now) in this film, and here it is; Lou Bloom (a character not so much played by but inhabited by Jake Gyllenhaal) is an extremely driven, persuasive and somewhat odd young man who is desperate for employment, and isn’t afraid to break the law for money. When he witnesses the aftermath of a car accident on the highway, he notices Joe Loder (the mighty Bill Paxton. More films need more Paxton) filming the wreckage. Lou then becomes intrigued by the world of ‘nightcrawling’; filming ‘exciting’ news stories/crimes/accidents in LA and selling the footage to news outlets. He even takes on an assistant (Riz Ahmed) to help him to do so. But as he gets deeper and deeper, he gets more and more desperate for the big stories, and will go to any means to get them…

To find the heart and soul of this film, we must look to Lou Bloom himself. Lou Bloom (it’s such a fun name to type and say) is an unhinged man desperate for work; always willing to tell everybody who even walks past him his skill set, his passion for work, his flexibility in terms of working hours. In short, Lou Bloom is a twisted, dark reflection of the LinkedIn generation; a walking, talking, near grovelling, gaunt CV. He wants to belong and he wants to be the best at what he does, but he has no idea in what capacity yet. The world of nightcrawling meets his sensibilities for having a twisted eye and the ability to manipulate people to get an end goal. When he does get into a position of vague success and takes on his own “employee”, he spouts back all the stuff he’s heard already about work placements; replicating employment jargon as a power play and to swell his own chest up like a proud owl. The heart and soul of Lou Bloom is that of jealousy, darkness and psychopathy; as is the heart and soul of the film itself.

The weird thing, though, is that somehow I wanted him and the film to be nastier and more twisted. Don’t get me wrong, it deals with some harsh subject matter and events in a darkly, hilariously trivial way (the skewed reality that news shows is made shockingly apparent) but I felt there was a step beyond that they did not go to. Now, this may be because to make Lou any more actively deranged would be too far, but it’s a ledge-beyond-the-edge (not the U2 guitarist) I wouldn’t have minded the film going to. Nonetheless, the protagonist and his scheming is what makes Nightcrawler such a great watch; quite what he’s up to, what he’s going to do next and how he is going to react keeps you guessing the whole way through, dealing with everything with internally ice cold, calculating efficiency. Jake Gyllenhaal is magnetising in this role, and this is, quite rightly, his show. Expect his fashion sense, with camera and nasal speaking voice to be replicated at fancy dress parties for a few years to come.

Nightcrawler* looks magnificent, too; it has an almost Drive like sensibility, with the bright shining city lights illuminating the dark stories unfolding before them, echoing the studio lights in the newsroom. The action is frantic where it needs to be, and the dialogue heavily paid attention to and given its due. The tension really does build in some sequences too, especially in (avoiding a spoiler safari here) a certain scene in somebody’s house. There are some scenes in the movie which feel like they can deflate this growing tension throughout the whole movie, but it’s still there, bubbling under the surface like a small but menacing kettle.

If I were to have small little niggling criticisms, I would say that I had a love/hate, hot/cold Katy Perry style relationship with the score; sometimes its guitars and bombast feel like they work, other times they don’t. The ending was also partially troubling for me too; there are parts I liked about it, but also parts I didn’t. This on/off style relationship I have with these components of course do not mean it’s a bad movie at all; a bad movie would make me flat out hate them.

Overall, however, while I’m not as fanatical about the film as I thought it would be, it’s still a very, very good ride; it keeps you guessing and truly plunges you head first into the world of chasing sirens and getting your hands well and truly dirty. Director Dan Gilroy has a hell of a writer/director debut on his hands with this one, and is rightly getting all the attention it deserves. If you like dark drama (if you don’t you’re pretty screwed at the cinema right now if I’m honest…), then be sure to check Nightcrawler* out as soon as you can.

Now onto romantic fluff-fest which has a confusingly placed comma in its title, Love, Rosie.

 

Love, Rosie (ARGH THAT COMMA) is the story of two friends, one a boy (Alex, played by Sam Claflin) and one a lady (called Rosie, funnily enough, played by Lily Collins – daughter of Phil), who grow up together throughout primary and high school, always juuuust missing out on each other. When she becomes pregnant and he moves away to Boston for university, the two try to keep in touch throughout the various events in their lives, but will they eventually get together and admit their feelings for one another?

You’ll remember when I reviewed The Best of Me only last week, I said it was one of the worst films of the year by far. The key point in that review was that I did not like it not because I am not in its target demographic, but because it was so utterly ridiculous and shambolically written it was insulting towards its target demographic. Once again, I am not in the target demographic for this film; extremely masculine and manly men such as myself aren’t in mind when these films are made. However, Love, Rosie is considerably better for its target audience than The Best of Me in a number of ways.

For a start, it is actually quite funny. Towards the beginning, it has quite a liberal attitude to sex and the uncomfortable parts of it that reflects nicely on screen, making the characters seem genuine and down to earth, despite how ridiculously good looking (read in Zoolander voice) they are. I was actually worried that after his turn as the despicable Alistair in The Riot Club it would be impossible for me to ever like Sam Claflin ever again, but he is a suitably charming but bumbling Hugh Grant figure here. Lily Collins as our central character is, too, an extremely likeable screen presence; you root for her the whole way through. It also has genuine character growth and narrative beats that, while somewhat contrived, do actually logically work and don’t feel all that forced; though that does include several weddings and a funeral (golden events in the romcom rulebook), as well as a level of predictability that can make the audience feel like fortune tellers.

Somewhat bizarrely, the thing I admire about the film is also something that it falls over on quite a few times; the timeframe. This film isn’t set over a summer or a year; it’s actually over several years, spanning to a little over a decade. While I respect the narrative choice to cover this amount of time, the film doesn’t really show much physical or mental progression by either of these characters over these relatively formative years of their young adult lives. The fact that they are and always have been in love is of course the common denominator, but there are no real dramatic changes except in terms of marital status; barely a hair moves on them throughout these years.

So, while contrived and a bit formulaic, this is a perfectly fine British rom com that doesn’t change the romcom rulebook, but sticks by it to good but not amazing effect.Though it does have the best use of Lily Allen’s song “F**k You” I’ve seen in a while, if you’re a romantic comedy fan then you will really enjoy this film; if you don’t, then there’s little to find here that warrants seeing it. Though it does of course tell the lesson that you can’t hurry love, no you’ll just have to wait, she said love don’t come easy… (get it? Because Lily Collins is Phil Collins daughter? And he sang that so- never mind…)

And, finally, we have the Guillermo del Toro produced The Book of Life.

 

Books have plots, and The Book of Life, though it sounds like a vague and sweeping title, is no different. In it, we have the story of two best friends Manolo (Diego Luna) and Joaquin (Channing all over your Tatum), who are both in love with their friend Maria (Zoe Saldana). The rulers of the different underworlds, La Muerte (Kate del Castillo) and Xibalba (Ron Perlman), make a wager with one another as to who Maria will marry; with La Muerte betting on Manolo and Xibalba betting on Joaquin. The boys grow up, but Maria moves away. Upon her return, who will she marry, and which post-death landlord will win the bet?

The story is actually more convoluted than that, bookended by a narrative framing device and also involving a town invaded by bandits, bullfighting, a love of music and a magical macguffin (just like my life, really). There is a LOT going on in this film in terms of story, as well as being based on Mexican beliefs about the afterlife; both concepts that very young children may find hard to grasp. Indeed, it can be quite confusing in some instances. But there is still a lot of fun to be had here once you get past the heavy exposition.

The locations, such as the magical fiesta world of the Land of the Remembered, are wonderfully vibrant and beautifully presented, and there are some fun voice performances (Ice Cube has a surprisingly funny turn) and dynamic dialogue for both kids and adults alike. The spirit of fun runs very deep within the Book of Life, presenting grand ideas such as what happens after we die and the nature of death in a jovial and colourful way rather than a heartbreakingly bleak way; indeed, one character at one point groans of the story “What is it with Mexicans and death?!”. Its look is also surprisingly original too, in a cinematic landscape filled to the brim with different character designs; the Book of Life has its own look and style that separates it from the rest.

In all, The Book of Life is perfect half term fodder; a colourful if exposition heavy and flawed family adventure with vibrant characters, a memorable look and fun dialogue.

*NOT the X-Men mutant

Dracula Untold & Life After Beth – Richards Reckons Reviews

Richards Reckons Untold. Life After Richards Reckons. Both of them sound like a hellish, horrible reality – but luckily, Richards Reckons is still being told, and we are all still living life DURING Richards Reckons, so it’s not true. Phew. Let’s reckon some movies and not contemplate that fun necropolis.

 

So then, first off, Dracula Untold. There is a plot here to be, er, told (rather contradicting its title but if it was left untold it would probably be a blank screen, and that’s no good for anybody, is it?), and here is that very plot that I can confirm is told; Vlad The Impaler (Hollywood’s newest Welshman Luke Evans) is a Transylvanian prince whose people faces the threat of Sultan Mehmed (Dominic Cooper) taking their young boys (including his son) to raise as soldiers for his army. Luckily, earlier that week, he encountered the demon Caligula (Charles ‘May I Take This’ Dance) at Brokentooth Mountain a week earlier, who he makes a deal with; become a vampire temporarily for three days with lots of basically superheroic powers (becoming an almost LITERAL Bat-Man) to defeat Mehmed with, but must resist drinking human blood in order to become human again.

I found out after this film that this is intended to be the first in a new shared universe (which are now order of the day again down in Hollywood land thanks to Marvel’s incredible success with the idea) of Universal Monsters; filling them with monsters such as the Mummy, the Wolf Man and Frankenstein; like an Addam’s Family style Avengers. In retrospect, it does sort of make sense; kicking it off with an origin story of one of the most recognisable of the heroes (Dracula acting a bit like Iron Man here in that respect, but literally no other ones), and having one of the most sequel baiting endings I have ever seen; which, by the way, ends in a way that doesn’t wholly make sense and with a line that seems like it was only put in because the screenwriters thought “oh, that would sound like SO cool”.

The fact of the matter here is that the story doesn’t really make a whole lot of sense. He stumbles upon Brokentooth Mountain (that would be a great name for a dentist surgery, wouldn’t it?) by chance and finds a monster inside; which is fine, but he then assumes they have the powers that he needed to defeat the armies. While it admittedly gets better as it goes, the beginning can actually feel quite boring at times; just plodding along in this fantasy Eastern Europe setting with wandering glances into exposition until the inevitable powers come along. When they do come, you’re glad; they make things far far more exciting, and I must admit that actually some of the battle sequences in which Vlad is using the powers against the (for some reason blindfolded) enemy soldiers are actually quite spectacular and exciting, with some Predator-style POV shots and impressive use of the classic using-millions-of-bats-as-a-giant-fist technique, which just isn’t used enough these days is it?

Apart from that, though, there isn’t really too much going on for this movie. The performances certainly don’t set your world on fire, though you can tell that Luke Evans as Vlad (who does a British accent for some reason when surrounded by his Transylvanian-accented people) is doing the best with what he’s given – though he never shows any signs of being as truly evil as the legendary Dracula, though in an effort to make the protagonist as likeable as possible you can see why they didn’t. Samantha Barks, playing Vlad’s wife, is almost screaming for more interesting things to do in this movie. Charles Dance is also an amazing actor who is completely wasted in this role, appearing in two or three scenes as a plot catalyst/exposition machine and yet pretty much stealing the show. Dominic Cooper’s performance suffers massively from him a) looking like that minor British celebrity Rylan Clarke after wandering onto the set of Clash of the Titans and b) having an accent that sounds like a Borat and Cheeky Girls mashup. I suspect there was a lot more of him left on the cutting room floor, as his villain is incredibly boring despite that description.

So there we are; Dracula Untold has some good things in it, such as some fangtastic (sorry) action sequences, and certainly isn’t terrible, but it could certainly be improved by better characterisation of pretty much everybody and a better narrative. If they want to kickstart this into a shared universe franchise they need to do a lot more with ol’ Vlad and the other characters to warrant them more interesting in their other incarnations.

Now then, time for some Life After Beth.

 

After Beth, Life suddenly has a plot, and that plot is this; Zach (Dane DeHaan) is utterly heartbroken after the loss of his girlfriend Beth (Aubrey Plaza), who died due to a snakebite while hiking alone. They had been arguing before she died and he feels awful about never reconciling with her, and deals with this guilt by occasionally seeing her parents Maury (John C. Reilly) and Geenie (Molly Shannon). One day he comes by the house and sees the impossible through the window; Beth is there, roaming the halls. They are reunited but it does not take him long to figure out that something is seriously up here, and eventually realises the truth; Beth is a resurrected zombie.

Once again, before I get to my review, I must warn you of something that happened during my screening that may have taken me away from the film slightly (because, apparently, I can never ever have a normal cinema trip ever again). I once against started to notice something weird going on in my screening; the fire exit door near the screen kept opening mysteriously and a figure watched the audience, not the screen, a few minutes at a time. This was repeated a few times until eventually the figure walked out, looked around a bit at the audience, then walked out into the foyer. It doesn’t sound like much but, for some reason, it freaked me the F out, so it’s possible I missed a couple of bits of the movie while trying to figure out just what made this guy tick.

Anyway, back to the OTHER side of the screen. Adding another title to the growing romzomcom subgenre (of which Shaun of the Dead remains the best, JUST SAYIN), Life After Beth has a very dry and deadpan tone, married with the cinematic style of a quirky indie movie. This, combined with the admittedly quite outlandish, bizarre and dark subject matter, means that Life After Beth will absolutely definitely not be everyone’s cup of hot beverage. It’s not quite as laugh-out-loud (or LOL as the kids say) as you think it might be, with the humour coming from the dark and often surreal tone.

The film makes an effort too to make its zombies and its situation unique. They don’t just rise and THEN want to eat you; they rise and firstly find their way back into their old lives; they run, talk, become incredibly horny and argue; they even find soft jazz calming and addictive. After this, of course, they have a hunger to eat real life human people and near invincible, but I liked the fact that they added a new spin to their zombies on this instead of sticking to the usual blueprint. It also doesn’t focus on the general zombie uprising and how society is coping with it; that is going on in the background, only giving us slithers of details about the extremity of how the local neighbourhood is dealing with it. I admire its cojones in this respect for both having this amount of detail in its gradual descent to hell on earth in the first place, and restricting it to the background and allowing the characters to be the forefront of the film.

The performances too are all pretty good; John C Reilly and Molly Shannon add real desperate character to their roles which in other hands could be in danger of being quite boring (Zach’s parents, on the other hand, do suffer from this affliction). Anna Kendrick too, though in it very briefly, always lifts the screen when she appears on it (not literally, that would be a bizarre trick). Dane DeHaan is fantastic as per usual in his role as the most sane person in this weird world, being both rational and desperate to believe that his girlfriend has been resurrected with no problems whatsoever; however it’s the first scenes in which he is visibly stricken with guilt where his acting chops truly get to shine (do chops shine? If not, he makes them shine because he’s so damn good an actor). Really, the titular Beth is the one in the spotlight here, and Aubrey Plaza plays the role perfectly; admittedly it seems the role is written directly for her deadpan persona, but she does it so very well you forgive her for a bit of typecasting. She is also insanely creepy as her mortal state devolves, whispering almost demonically, growling and scratching while retaining her charm.

In all, Life After Beth is very dry, deadpan and dark (alliteration is for cool kids) and so will not be to everybody’s tastes. However, if you enjoy dark and fairly surreal humour and fancy yet another different take on the rom-zom-com subgenre, Life After Beth is for you.

The Guest & Before I Go To Sleep – Richards Reckons Review(s!)

Much like a certain Michael Jackson, this post has a little bit of a naughty, edge of your seat theme – THRILLERS (not what you were thinking, come on now, that was never proven).

Let’s kick off with The Guest, the new David Guest biopic.

That is, of course, a joke. Thank goodness. Nay, this is about a different kind of Guest – namely, David (Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens), who appears at the Peterson family’s home after their soldier son is said to have been killed in combat. He says he is a friend of his from the military, who said that he would visit them when combat stopped. He ends up staying for a little while and fully integrating himself into the family – however, as weird things start happening in their small town, daughter Anna (Maika Monroe) starts to suspect that there’s more to him that meets the eye…

The Guest is a film that will rub a lot of people up the wrong way (not literally; 4D films don’t quite exist in the mainstream yet) because of its fusion of genres as well as its rather liberal attitude to violence. It’s also absolutely insane, OTT and more bonkers than a Dizzee Rascal single. I, however, absolutely loved this movie, pretty much for those exact reasons.

One of the main thrusts that it works so well is an absolutely magnificent central performance by Dan Stevens – by the end of the running time, it left me convinced he’s going to be one of the biggest things in Hollywood since the big wooden sign. He plays the enigmatic David with equal levels of charm and danger; charisma and intensity; magnetism and insanity; nouns and other nouns. The character of David is fantastic; in the beginning, he is able to worm his and his surrogate family’s way out of trouble with smarts as well as smacks, before he uses more insane means of disposing of his problems. You could easily watch David forever and get lost in his big innocent but brooding blue eyes. He’s also very good looking, if you’re into that, so there’s a plus. There are other good performances from all around him, such as from Maika Monroe and Lance Reddick (who does somewhat suffer from typecasting as FBI/police types), but make no mistake; this is David’s show.

It’s absolutely dripping with an 80’s vibe in a modern setting; the colour palette (especially around David’s eyes), the beautifully synthy score, it’s wonderful use of slow motion and pretty much the entirety of its third act are all wonderful examples of this, and the whole way through it harks back to films such as the Terminator and even Halloween. Comparisons to Drive will also be made, due to a steely main performance and sudden lurches into violence and chaos.

The plot careens from genre to genre, from action to thriller to horror and a darkly comic undercurrent the whole way throughout. The film seems to be fully aware that it’s doing this mash-up as opposed to doing it by accident. It leaves people in the auditorium laughing, at first nervously due to its dark tones in a “should I be laughing at this?!” way; not at it, but with it.

Bullets, explosions and nervous laughs follow as David waltzes into the Peterson family’s lives, with some genuine tension as well as genuine laughs. There may be a few plot and logical points that don’t quite follow, but a wonderfully cool but manic central performance from Dan Stevens coupled with gripping direction & writing from team Simon Barrett and Adam Wingard, topped with a wonderful 80s score make The Guest an absolute modern joy to see in the cinema. Miss at your peril.

Before you go to sleep, in part deux of this reveux, we have Before I Go To Sleep.

 

Before I Go To Sleep tells the tale of Christine Lucas (who coincidentally has the same face as Nicole Kidman), a woman who, after an accident, wakes up every single day with her mind as a clean slate – not remembering anything of the days that have happened before. Her weary husband Ben, played by Colin Firth, has to remind her every single day that she’s actually 40 years old and not 27, and every single day Dr Nash (Mark Strong) calls her to remind her of a video diary she has been keeping. But after said accident is revealed to be not-quite-what-she-thought flavoured, she then has to consider who she should really trust…

Before I Go To Sleep is an interesting film in that at first it can come off as quite plodding and not quite as tense as it maybe needs to be. The repetition of Christine’s day to day routine and Kidman’s worried expression can be quite annoying and weary (indeed, Edge of Tomorrow does do this a little bit better), but it is rather the point.Small revelation after small revelation, you feel more and more connected to Christine, but also more and more questionable about literally everybody else that populates the big screen in front of you – it’s a paranoia that’s distilled and seeps out of the film and into the audience very well. By the time the final act comes around, its darkness hits very hard and very quickly, by which time you are so attached to the vulnerable yet strong Christine that you are terrified for her.

This is mainly down to some fantastic central performances from Kidman, Firth and Strong (sounds a bit like a strange Crosby, Stills and Nash, that). Colin Firth and Mark Strong’s casting in the first place is a very clever move as the film constantly plays with audience perceptions of the actors and who they’ve played before, and you can tell that these are roles that they relish. It generates the “who do we/should we trust?” atmosphere that is absolutely necessary to make this film work and ramp up the tension, and it does – albeit it with a very sudden twist (which, I admit, I didn’t see coming) and a very sudden ramping up in darkness.

Overall, Before I Go To Sleep can be like a tortoise wearing an XXL jersey in parts of its beginning (ie a bit slow and a bit baggy), but when it picks up it’s like me – tightly wound, dark and clever, if a bit silly.

 

If I Stay & Sex Tape – Richards Reckons Review(s!)

ANOTHER twosome for you? Again? Well, you can count your lucky stars later – we’ve got films to review.

Bit of a romantic double bill this time around, looking at Sex Tape and If I Stay – let’s mix things up and start with the latter.

If I Stay is romantic drama set in Portland with a somewhat spiritual twist; in it, Mia (played by Chloë Grace Moretz) is a teenage cello enthusiast raised by rocker parents (The Killing’s Mireille Enos and, uh, not-The-Killing’s Joshua Leonard) who falls for rocker Adam (Jamie Blackley). They fall in love but, later, Mia and family are involved in a car accident, putting her in a coma and her disembodied spirit wandering the hospital, invisible to everybody, looking at the carnage around her and deciding whether or not to “stay”.

Before I proceed I’d like to say this – obviously, as you can see from that wonderfully crafted summary, I am not the target audience for this film; when they wrote the script, or indeed the book upon which it is based, they didn’t have a handsome, dark-haired-but-ginger-bearded (it’s a look I’m trying out) 22 year old man in mind; it is undoubtedly a film for teenage girls and young women. So while I jot down all my little opinions and things, bear in mind that you may well enjoy it more if you’re in the demographic in the crosshairs for this movie.

A lot of people have said of this film that it looks like a tearjerker due to the very nature of its plot; teenage girl who in love nearly dying, while her family members are in danger of meeting the same fate too. Admittedly, those are some pretty emotional beats to drop into a film (in a script sense, not a Skrillex sense), and the film does have them. However, strangely, If I Stay just doesn’t give you enough time to react to them. Without wanting to spoil anything, when these sad events happen it’s almost as if the film sweeps them under the carpet very quickly to get on with the romantic plot. The main thrust of the story is actually a patchwork of flashbacks woven throughout the admittedly quite sparse present-set section of an invisible Chloë Grace Moretz running endlessly through hospital corridors like a quite literal episode of Doctor Who.

The performances themselves are good – Mireille Enos gives a reliably good performance as Mia’s mother, for instance – but nothing about this screams extraordinary. Chloë Moretz is an extremely talented screen performer who has a great future in film ahead of her, and she does the best with what she’s given in this, but it unfortunately isn’t much; she surprisingly isn’t given many opportunities to use raw emotion, which is strange given the subject matter of the film. Far and away the best emotional performance, and arguably the best scene, comes from Stacy Keach (who plays Mia’s grandfather) when he is sat by her comatose bedside (Mia being the comatose, not the bed nor the side), giving a tearful monologue to her about waking up. It would have been nice if we had more scenes like this rather than with her boyfriend Adam (on a side note, he brings a guitar to a hospital ICU, which I’m almost positive is not allowed).

Adam, as a character, may as well be renamed Sauvignon Blanc – because he is SO WHINY (haha, see what I did?). His little tantrums and hypocrisy make him at times incredibly annoying, and all the mystique surrounding him only serves to hype and stir up this annoyance. It absolutely puts you on Mia’s side with their arguments, and that may be the film’s intention, but you almost actually don’t want her to get back with him when (or, indeed, if) she wakes up. Their romantic relationship is also shoved down your throat for a lot of the film, with lots of montages of them kissing or watching each other dreamily – don’t get me wrong, I know these are the ingredients of a romantic drama cake, but they could have been cut down quite extensively.

 

There’s also a strange definition of what rock is in this film – the rough rock scene in Portland has sort of been scourer-fied for a mainstream audience, which is a shame; the comparison between neat classical music would have been better if they had made the rock a bit… rockier. Other musical interludes are very impressive however, such as a group performance of Today by Smashing Pumpkins (I was terrified when this scene began because sing-songy scenes normally turn me right off, but this worked) and Mia’s work with her cello is amazing (which is lucky as there is SO MUCH CELLO).

At the end of the day (it’s night time, but also), the target audience will enjoy this but it gives a lot of its lengthy runtime to the development of a relationship you don’t care too much for rather than the actual tragedies in the plot.

ANYWHO, to the Sex Tape mobile!

Sex Tape is a romantic (I guess?) comedy film with the following plot; Annie (Cameron Diaz) and Jay (Jason Segel) are a married couple with children who used to have sex all the time (the married couple, that is, not the children). Now, due to ruddy old life getting in the way, they always feel too exhausted. One day, they decide to celebrate a promotion by getting the kids to Annie’s mother’s house and filming themselves going through the ‘Joy of Sex’ positions. However, due to the nature of “the cloud”, it’s synced to various devices that they’ve given away – and they’ve got to get them back at any cost.

From the title, you’d think that this was full of raunch and a bit saucy, but it surprisingly isn’t – it contains some of the most cartoonish live-action sex ever put on film, in fact. Diaz and Segel shout “OH MY GOD!” and “OH YEAH!” almost constantly and do various other sexual things that nobody ever does in real life ever – it’s almost as if they’re playing a very noisy game of charades where the answer is always what teenagers think sex is. It’s quite literally what the film starts with, while Annie is filling out a blog on the details of her sex life or lack thereof (a bit like I am now, though I’ll spare you THOSE details), so it’s enough to stick in your mind for the duration of the film; it is, after all, in the ruddy title.

Anyway, Diaz and Segel are fine comic performers, but in this they’re not really given the chance to shine at all. Their characterisation is basically that they are both horny almost all the time, except when they’re arguing. There are very few comedy setpieces – and where there are any, they last far too long (this includes a seemingly eternity-lasting battle between a dog and Jay). The best character in the film is the eccentric Hank Rosenbaum, played by the delightful Rob Lowe – though he is essentially playing the same deliciously funny character he plays in Parks & Recreation, just with added drug use and modified Disney paintings. Apple too is a character as much as any other; count how many times Apple products are seen or mentioned and you’d be surprised that the concept of an iPad and its “AMAZING camera” weren’t a main character billings.

There are funny lines here and there in Sex Tape but ultimately, it’s very forgettable and misses far more than it hits. It’s not quite filthy or shocking enough to be a sex comedy, but also not sentimental or really funny enough to be a romcom either – it tries to be both, but ultimately fails at both, like when somebody trying to learn how to juggle apples and rollerskate at the same time. It’s a shame as it involves some really great comedy performers on board here, but unfortunately it lacks any real thrust (hehehe, thrust).

Hector and the Search for Happiness – Richards Reckons Review

There’s a joke about the word “happiness” I’d love to put here but I unfortunately won’t for deux reasons; 1) because it’s phonetic and this, in case you haven’t realised, is in print and b) they actually use it in the film. Basically, the word “happiness” sounds like a male sex organ. Worth it, eh?

Enough organ jokes, down to business. Hector and the Search for Happiness is a British comedy drama film (made by no less than 6 production companies), and the plot will follow after this cheeky semicolon; Hector (Simon Pegg), a psychologist who lives in a lovely flat in lovely central London with the lovely Clara (Rosamund Pike), decides that he for some reason doesn’t like his life and needs to set out on a trip around the world alone to investigate and research what happiness is, for the sake of himself and for the sake of his patients.

Similarities between this, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Eat, Pray, Love will all be made because, like those films, it involves somebody travelling the globe, often to more rundown areas, in order for them to truly appreciate their own life.  As you can tell from the title and the concept, we follow Hector for quite a lot of the 120 minute run time – and played by Simon Pegg, it’s safe to assume you are in safe hands… er, safely. Or, at least, that’s what I thought, being a fan of the Peggster’s work for many years (thus earning the ability to call him “Peggster”). And, yes, Ol’ Si in areas does give it his all, with waterworks in all the various places they need to be.

 

But the fact of the matter is this; Hector is, in parts, actually an incredibly unlikeable lead character. Within days of being away from his girlfriend, he cheats on her without any regret whatsoever (and in fact suggests that this could be a “key to happiness”); after being in impoverished Africa, he celebrates the fact that he is on 1st class on the plane; he also has a tendency of being incredibly smug. Of course, I understand that not all protagonists are likeable or moral, but it certainly doesn’t help that he’s not even immoral in an interesting way like Don Draper, Walter White or Big Mac from Casualty (only joking, he’s a hero).

It’s filled with pseudo-philosophy and moral lessons that just feel so forced and whimsical it puts you off the whole thing as they appear in scribbled handwriting and little doodles on the screen. They’re exactly the sort of thing you write in a little book in stylised writing in your teens, then find it under your bed years later and cringe to death by how little sense they make; for example, one of them is “people who are afraid to die are afraid to live”, or “happiness is sometimes not knowing the whole story :(“, which appears as his little moral lesson as he sees a pimp drag off and beat a prostitute he had slept with the previous night. Poor him, not knowing the whole story. It’s just one of the occasions in which he feels sorry for himself and the audience pretty much wholly disagree with him.

 

There’s also an absolutely bizarre shift in gear to a very dark place about 5/9ths of the way through that really doesn’t work; maybe it would as a particularly dark denouement, but at that time it just seems oddly placed, like a nihilistic tortoise in the pilot’s seat of a helicopter. In fact, a lot of the pacing is erratic and jerky (perhaps the previous simile doesn’t apply here) – it certainly feels like a very long 120 minutes, and not a very funny one either.

There are also a lot of very good actors in this that are completely wasted – among the criminally under-used are Toni Collette, Stellan Skarsgård, Jean Reno and Tracy Anne-Oberman, all of whom only play very two dimensional characters. Rosamund Pike too suffers from, I suspect, her scenes being cut short – this may go some way to cover her character’s very strange mood shifts over the course of the Skype calls, which I sense are not on purpose. 

 

All of these are the ingredients of a particularly lacklustre and irritating end result, full of stereotypes bordering on offensive, overly fluffy and whimsical segments and “redemption” that doesn’t feel deserved at all. Simon Pegg gives it his all but the central character is burdened with terrible, unlikeable decisions and a central relationship that doesn’t quite make sense. The search for happiness certainly is not found in a screening of this, lemme tell ya (ZING!).