The Odd Life of Timothy Green

There are some people only a mother would love, and there are some films only Disney would make. The Odd Life of Timothy Green is one of those films. It has all their trademark kitch- a small industrial town going through a rough time; a childless and twee married couple; a cheeky, but wise young boy; and of course magic. It follows the Disney formula so precisely that the story is predictable and characters are as one-dimensional as they can be. This should be excusable in a kids film, but Timothy Green insults children’s intelligence and will bore the poor adults who have to sit through it with them.

The hard-up town is called Stanleyville and it has suffers both a drought and the potential closure of the pencil factory, the town’s main economic source. It is quite clear where this town will be going over the course of the story. Living in the town are Cindy and Jim Green (Jennifer Garner and Joe Edgerton) who desperately want a child, but can’t conceive. After a night of drinking (probably the only realistic reaction these characters show to their situation) the couple make a list if all the qualities they wish their child would have. They then bury the list in the back garden and after a bit of magic (now that’s real Disney) the list turns into Timothy Green (C J Adams) who changes the lives of everyone in the town.

Every plot development is traditionally Disney, and can be seen coming as soon as it is hinted at and this makes the film dull. If it had been at the hands of another studio some darkness and depth may have added a bit of interest to the concept by making it a harder hitting film The closure of a major economic source to the town could have been used to show the difficulties many who work in America’s manufacturing towns are facing. However, this dark side is not present with Disney, who still has their characters live in a large house despite two poorly paid jobs.

The characters also lack any true human darkness or depth and are instead traditional Disney creations. Jennifer Garner’s Cindy is petty, over bearing, and meddlesome both at the start of the film (which is forgivable) and at the end when she should have learnt her lesson. While Joe Edgerton’s Jim is equally meddlesome, but also highly competitive and pushy in a way that will make many parents rip their hair out in despair. As a couple they are the last ones who should become parents. The only likable Green is Timothy who C J Adams manages to play as sweet and kind without overdoing it. Considering this is his second ever Hollywood role C J Adams holds his own and is the best thing about the film.

With The Odd Life of Timothy Green Disney have gone back to their usual formula, but audiences have matured beyond the simple story of magic and wishes. The film may go down well in Middle America, but over here audiences want a little more substance both at the ages of 5 and 35.

Degree-Fail

Dull, cliche and patronising. No one will enjoy this film.

Kaboom!

 

When I first went to watch ‘Kaboom!’ I never intended to review it, I thought I deserved a night off. I just wanted to watch a film that I didn’t over-analyse, or try to out-smart and predict (which I have been known to do). But as the movie went on I found myself itching to jot down my thoughts so I could share them with an audience. This need became so great the I ended up using my phone as a notepad to hold my long stream of consciousness about Greg Araki’s latest film. The last thought I typed down pretty much sums up how this review will go ‘It’s just bad’.

The most important aspects of any film are a good plot and a good script; ‘Kaboom!’ fell down with both. Perhaps the biggest disappointment is that it all starts off so well (or at least average) with young arts student Smith (Thomas Dekker) experiencing the ‘student life’ of parties, pills and a lot of sex.  Since Smith is a gay boy, but is seen having more sex with girls, it seems that Araki is trying to show the fluidity of sexuality, nothing that hasn’t been done before.  In fact everyone seems to be jumping into bed with everyone, both boys and girls, all except Smith’s lesbian friend Stella(Haley Bennett) who stays firmly in her pigeonhole. Although the amount of sex is over the top, and the excuses to remove clothes are more poorly veiled than in ‘Twilight’, it is what we have come to expect from these coming out/coming of ages stories. So although the plot was predictable, it did not irritate the audience, merely bore them. However, it appears Araki saw this coming and decided that in the last 20 minutes the film would lose the plot and all hell would break loose. Suddenly, almost out of nowhere, the film is full of secret societies, paranormal powers, messiahs, nuclear arms and SPOLIER- the end of the world-. The last quarter makes the whole film feel disjointed and not fully thought through; like a GCSE film project that wishes to mimic the absurdity of ‘Donnie Darko’.  But where ‘Donnie Darko’ had hints and strangeness from the very beginning, ‘Kaboom!’ threw most of it in at the end. To give ‘Kaboom!’ its due the plot no longer becomes predictable, but that is only because it becomes so obscure you are left wondering if this is meant to be mocking something you’re not familiar with.

Now I come to the other integral part of a film-the script, and this one is almost as easy to poke fun of as the plot. The entire film is an out of proportion melodrama and this is reflected in the writing, with its over the top language and awkward rapport. The explicit sexual conversations, which is all these teens seem to talk about, feels as if it comes straight from the Sex and the City guide to meal conversation. On top of that, to show that the writers are hip, cool and trendy the script is full of modern pop references that are inorganically inserted into conversation. Even though there are a lot of problems with the script, I will admit there some great lines delivered by the female cast. They range from ‘I need to pee like a banshee’ to ‘It’s a vagina, not a plate of spaghetti’ and even ‘You meet some guy on a nude beach and after five minutes you’re downloading his hard drive in the back of a van. You’re a slut.’ which has to be best line in the film.

The final problem with the film has to be the characters; all are incredibly flat with little to them and spark no interest from the audience. The central character Smith, his best friend Stella and sex buddy London have little going for them (or against them to be fair), while minor characters like Smith’s roommate Thor or Stella’s witchy lover Lorelei add so little that you wonder if there is any reason for them to be included at all.  Every member of the cast is constantly stunning to look at, but this becomes a problem when they are constantly stunning, even after a 5-hour sex session Stella’s hair and make up are still perfectly applied. I expect many women wish to know her secret. Why can’t directors bring themselves to show sex for the gritty, sweaty enjoyment that we all know it is? This filtered, romanticised view does the film no favours.

Overall it is disappointing that Araki who has released ‘Mysterious Skin’, which dealt honestly with the dark issues of child molestation, has decided to direct something as shallow as ‘Kaboom!’ turned out to be. I may be wrong, God knows critics and bloggers have been in the past. ‘Kaboom!’ may gather a cult following like other ‘great before their time’ classics such as ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’ and ‘Donnie Darko’. Maybe I missed the point; I will admit I heard people leaving the cinema raving about how ‘truly amazing’ it was. However, for me the whole thing was just rubbish.

Degree-Fail

This film just doesn’t know what to be or do with 

itself. It starts off one thing and ends another

and is just boring and annoying to watch-a real shame.

(If you are confused about the rating system please click on the ‘About This Blog Page’ which will explain it all)

Hereafter

By guest writer Will Tooke

Imagine yourself a film investor and one day, you are brought a new project, a script called ‘Hereafter’. It’s written by Peter Morgan, who wrote The Queen, Frost / Nixon and The Damned United, all of which are great films. Clint Eastwood is slated to direct, Matt Damon will star, and Steven Spielberg will produce. It’s a no brainer, right? It ticks every box. Sounds like a sure fire contender come awards season, right? You’d be stupid not to part with money to get this baby off the ground. So you sign the cheque on the dotted line, and contribute to the $50 million dollar budget.

Fast forward a year or so. You see the final cut of the film, and realise you’ve just made a massive mistake. It’s one of those films where you’re sat waiting for it to get good – but it just never does. If anything it gets worse. A lot worse.

Matt Damon plays George. In a particularly limp bit of exposition, we learn that an operation on his brainbox when he was a kiddywink left him psychic. So now whenever he touches people, he gets flashes of their dead loved ones, and can talk with them for a bit, before they bugger off into the mysterious ‘hereafter’.  Problem is, it means that he can’t ever get close to women, because inevitably that involves touching people. From this, I deduce that George is probably a virgin, because sex involves, you know, touching people. I mean imagine having to have a conversation with someone’s dead nan just as you’re getting it on with them. Nightmare. Of course, we feel sorry for George. He’s a nice guy. Whereas other mediums and psychics are charlatan snake oil merchants, George is the real deal. He doesn’t do it for the money. In fact, he doesn’t do it at all because as he will tell us at least twice in the script IT’S NOT A GIFT, IT’S A CURSE! In the meantime, his insensitive brother tries to persuade him to get rich using his talents. Poor bloke. Basically, George is an alright guy, but he’s really, really boring.  Will he be able to come to terms with his ability (did I mention that IT’S NOT A GIFT, IT’S A CURSE!?), and will he find love? Spoiler Alert: Yes, yes he will.

Meanwhile, half a world away in Paris, a generically plucky female journalist, Marie Lelay (Cécile De France) is investigating ‘the other side’. She does this because during the 2004 tsunami, she had a near death experience, glimpsing the great hereafter. Which looks shadowy and blurry and a bit crap, mainly because Eastwood splurged away most of the special effects budget recreating a Thai market getting swept away in a swirling torrent of bamboo and bodies. It’s the only bit of the film that made me sit up, and it was over in the first ten minutes. And even then, the CGI wasn’t all that great.

The third strand brings Marcus(played by twin brothers Frankie and George McLaren) a troubled cockerrnee waif of a lad whose twin brother Jason gets splatted by a white van man whilst running away from some hoodied youths. He later gets placed into care as his single mum is on heroin. Because this kid is basically the poster boy for Broken Britain, I was kind of surprised some knife crime wasn’t casually thrown into his story for good measure. In for a penny, in for a pound. Marcus misses his brother, and longs for a way to contact him. He tries psychics, but they are the bad kind of psychics who aren’t real psychics at all. Why, if only he could find a real psychic. Can you see what’s coming? Of course you bloody can, because the storyline has no subtlety whatsoever. It doesn’t so much signpost what’s to follow, as it does rip the signpost out of the narrative roadside and smack you round the head with it.

After Jason’s ghost saves his twin from the 7/7 tube bombings (no, really), the various plot strands sluggishly converge at a London book fair (no, really) where Lelay is promoting her new book about the other side, where George is attending a reading of his favourite author – Charles Dickens – and where Marcus’s well-meaning foster parents bring him for a reason that’s too earth shatteringly hackneyed to mention here. Come the end, you just won’t care anymore.

Damon manages to soldier on throughout, giving a solid performance as George – against the odds, given the script – but even if you’re a diehard fan of his, you might as well save some money and wait a few weeks to see him in True Grit, which is an exponentially better film. Eastwood, who has done great things as a director – particularly with Flags of our Fathers and Invictus, really drops the ball with Hereafter. We can only hope he gets it back together for next year’s promising sounding Dustin Lance Black penned J.Edgar Hoover biopic, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Black, like Morgan, is historically a great screenwriter, but if anything is to be learnt from Hereafter, it’s that films are won and lost largely on how good or bad the script is.  In the case of Hereafter, it never rises above being stunningly bad. The fleeting mention of a religious conspiracy somehow quashing scientific research into the hereafter is at least an interesting idea, but it never gets developed. But then that’s hardly a surprise seeing how the film never offers anything approaching answers to any of the questions it sets up. Where exactly are the people that George glimpses in the hereafter? Is it heaven? Is there a heaven? No answers are forthcoming, because all that’s like, well mysterious and stuff, yeah? The ‘mystery’ allows Peter Morgan to lazily scramble out the corner he wrote himself into. Perhaps the film makers kidded themselves into believing they are prompting the audience to think about the profound questions of death and the afterlife, but the only real question this film begs is how the hell did it get made in the first place?

 

I don’t think we’ll ever know.

Degree-Fail.

The first truly bad film of 2011, all the more inexcusable given the talent behind it.

With tedious dialogue and a poor storyline, this will surely be remembered as an embarrassing

career blip for all involved. Melodrama of the worst order.

You have been warned.

(If you are confused about the rating system please click on the ‘About This Blog Page’ which will explain it all)

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Coalitions are rather in vogue at the moment, first from the government and now from the film studios. The ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ is the second blockbuster out this year from the collaboration between Disney and Jerry; the first being the Prince of Persia. The jury is still out on the success of the ‘Con-Dems’ but this reporter has truly made up his mind on the ‘Dis-Bruck’. Both ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ and ‘The Prince of Persia’ run from the same vein. Should I copy and paste  my Prince of Persia review I wrote four months ago? No. I’ll be good.

The story is heavily on the basic side; this plot is by no means in the same league as ‘Inception’. In 740 AD the sorcerer Balthazar (Nick Cage) is an apprentice of Merlin. He and two other apprentices help Merlin battle Morgana le Fay, but due to the betrayal of Horvath (Alfred Molina), one of his apprentices, Merlin is killed. Because of this Morgana is only trapped, not defeated, and in doing so takes the body of the third apprentice, Balthazar’s lover, with her. Balthazar then spends the next 1,000 or so years searching for Merlin’s heir who has the power to help him defeat Morgana. The heir turns out to be wet physics nerd Dave Stutler (Jay Baruchel) who must be trained in order to defeat Morgana, even if he doesn’t want to. The plot has little, if no, surprises and readers of this brief synopsis can likely guess how the rest of the film pans out.

Unusually for Jerry Bruckheimer, who usually charges up his films with high calibre star power, there are only two big names in the cast: Nicholas Cage and Alfred Molina. The effect of these two stars could not have contrasted more. Nicholas Cage has consistently failed in past films to convince me of his acting skills and this film didn’t help. His performance was wooden and lacked the depth and slightly oddball, troubled quality that the character desperately called for. Alfred Molina on the other hand plays Horvath extremely well, making him both sinister and believable. His performance easily stole the light away from the other actors on screen. The other main cast members are new to important big screen roles and it really showed in their performances. Baruchel’s portrayal of Dave as an ordinary boy in extraordinary circumstances came across as wet, whiny and pathetic; while Teresa Palmer, who plays Becky (the love interest) was also one of the most pointless heroines I have ever seen. Palmer’s character added nothing to the plot and any acting ability she might have was lost in the dire script.

The saving grace of the film is the magic which probably beats the effects used in the Harry Potter films. All the spells and enchantments are creatively rendered which makes the magical fight scenes a delight to watch. The movie also tries to add depth to the magic by fusing it with science, but this has limited success; I doubt turning a pack of wolves into puppies can be explained using science. However the depth to the magic doesn’t extend very far and a lot of intricate details and histories that could have been added are simply skimmed over. Instead it is replaced by the inevitable goofy scene of out of control brooms and water; no one was surprised.

Although the magic and special effects are top notch they can’t save a film where the dialogue and the script have been ignored. The deficiencies in these areas mean the film lacks any shred of tension, clearly a major problem for an action movie. The fights, the chase scenes and the near misses do nothing to thrill the audience or keep them on the edge of their seats because they care too little about the characters. Overall the film did not live up to its potential due to the poor dialogue and dull plot. These aspect could not be saved by the beautiful special effects or by the film riding on the back of the magic franchise.

Degree: Fail

The movie is a great disappointment and had the potential

to deliver a lot more than it did