This is the End

The world is going to end any minute now. By the time you’re done with this review it could already be over. At least that’s what Hollywood believes. Over the past few years it has churned out countless predictions for how humanity will meet its demise. Whether it’s a Mayan prophecy, alien invasion, zombie attack or a deathly virus Hollywood has been very creative in showing audiences worse case scenarios. But after all this tragedy some comedy relief is not far behind and this year some studios want us to go out on a high note. There is Edgar Wright’s latest Cornetto release (the series of films with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost that all have a different flavour of Cornetto in them) The World’s End as well as This Is a Disaster and Rapture-Palooza. But before them comes celebrity crammed This is the End a film so over the top it will either be an instant hit or a total flop.

In This is the End all the actors play caricatures of themselves. Jay Baruchel, from Knocked Up and How to Train your Dragon, comes to LA to visit his old friend Seth Rogen. After getting high together and playing computer games Rogen persuades Baruchel to go to a party at James Franco’s new house. There Baruchel must socialise with Rogen’s new friends who he’s made since he became a huge star. Then judgement day happens. The righteous are taken up in a blue light and the wicked, including most of the celebrities at the house party, are left on Earth to fend for themselves.

Although this doesn’t sound like this should work it does. It’s a stoner comedy that could have only come from the minds of Rogen and frequent collaborator Evan Goldberg, the team that brought us Pineapple Express and Superbad. There is a smorgasbord of talent here that all play up to the public’s perceptions of themselves. Rogen is a weed smoking nice guy; Baruchel is indie kid who hates LA; Franco is a liberal intellectual snob; Danny McBride is a gross partier; Jonah Hill is the new kid who wants to be nice. This leads to a number of extreme and comedic situations-whether it’s Franco painting a picture for Rogen to show his admiration or McBride turning up uninvited to the party. There are also characters that go against perception such as Michael Cera who plays a cocaine snorting sex-pest who receives a duel blowjob his Franco’s bathroom. The audience will laugh right the way through the film at just how ridiculous the characters are. The greatest scene has to be the one which involves Emma Watson using an axe to steal the group’s supplies. The movie should be a hit just for that.

It is possible that This is the End has unseen depths that analyse the concepts of celebrities and how they are not who we perceive them to be and in fact not good people (since most of them were left behind after the rapture). But on the surface it’s a simple buddy movie about sticking with people as they change and remembering to bring your friends with you as life goes on. That is if you were having a friendship crisis during the apocalypse. As all these actors have worked together in the past and enjoy each other’s company the chemistry is all there making the relationships believable. Baruchel is great as the geeky outsider who doesn’t like his best friend’s cooler friends.

About two thirds of the way through the film does drag a little. It probably could have had slightly less Lord of the Flies style examples of animosity growing within the house. It was not necessary to see every way in which the characters possibly fall out. But saying that the end makes up for this issue. With demon attacks, cannibalism and confrontations with the anti-Christ, the final thirty minutes is full of suspense.

This movie may be outrageous and extreme, but that is why it works so well. The cast fully get into their, sometimes self-critical, roles and play them with gusto. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but for those who have enjoy gross-out, dicks-out type comedies this is some of Rogen and Goldberg’s best work.

Degree-2:1

A hilarious film that doesn’t take itself seriously

and is better for it.

 

 

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)

Bridesmaids

Guest writer Andy Bruce

‘Bridesmaids’: the anti-chick flick, laugh-a-minute, female version of the Hangover, if the ten star user reviews on IMDb are to be believed.

They aren’t.

The film is as ‘anti-chick’ as a spa weekend with your BFF, or carrying a tiara-wearingChihuahuain a Mulberry handbag. I mean, the plot follows a group of women planning a wedding – there’s very little you can do with that to ‘unchickify’ it (though Wiig (‘Saturday Night Live’) and Mumolo (You won’t have heard of her before now) would have you believe that a couple of scenes of scatological humour are enough to do just that); there’s a predictable girl meets guy love story; and it ends with a musical performance which screams ‘Shrek’ more than ‘comedy film of the decade’. This isn’t to say the film is bad – not by any stretch of the imagination. It just doesn’t live up to the hype or the expectations I had going in.

However, any film that opens with Jon Hamm (‘Mad Men’) playing an arrogant asshole having fast sex with the hilarious Kristen Wiig’s Annie is bound to have some great moments, and here the film does not disappoint: from Wiig’s early impression of a penis, to Wiig’s performance on the plane, to Wiig going crazy at the bridal shower. In fact Wiig gets so many great scenes you might be forgiven for thinking the film was written just for her to show off… oh… wait… I guess it was. Don’t get me wrong; Wiig is a great comedian, and if the 2008 Republican vice-president nominee had looked like her instead of Tina Fey, perhaps Wiig would have her own (mediocre) half hour comedy on NBC and Fey would be the one writing greedy big screen scripts for herself. But the fact is that the supporting cast of ‘Bridesmaids’ (perhaps with the exception of Rose ‘Ugly when she cries’ Byrne) barely gets a word in, so much so that the bridal party of six has essentially become a party of four by the end of the film, with Wendi McLendon-Covey and Ellie Kemper becoming nothing more than glorified extras after the halfway point – so much so that I can’t even remember their character’s names. And the same is true of Matt Lucas and Rebel Wilson’s creepy brother/sister act, and the almost offensive underuse of Jill Clayburgh as Annie’s well-meaning mother. The film devotes so much time to Annie’s story that it never really develops the other characters to the extent that they might possibly deserve, and there is rarely any conclusion to their subplots.

The other exception to this is Melissa McCarthy’s (‘Gilmore Girls’) portrayal of Megan, who at first glance might look like the token ‘comic relief’ member of the group. Indeed, at first she plays up to this role with a couple of throw-away lines and some physical comedy, but then develops into a character with actual feelings – a rare occurrence in the film. Her own subplot even gets a conclusion in the coveted (but utterly ridiculous) post-credits scene. So she, along with Chris O’Dowd, who plays the only not-a-glorified-extra male character surprisingly well in a female (Wiig) dominated film, is the real stand-out. Whilst Rose Byrne, who I expected to be great, was lumbered with a two dimensional bitch of a character whose eleventh hour reprieve is out of character at best, and totally unbelievable at worst.

All of this makes the film sound pretty bad, which isn’t the case. It’s just far easier to point out its flaws than remember the scenes that had the audience laughing*, which there were plenty of. For all the above criticism, Wiig plays Annie perfectly, switching from hilarity to sombre moments seamlessly, and carrying the audience with her on her journey to rock bottom and then even lower, and you can truly feel for her character. The main plot revolves more around friendship than the actual planning of the wedding, which gives the film more depth than its poster and marketing would have you believe, and the fact that they managed to make an actual comedy into a full length two hour film rather than the standard eighty minute ‘comedy’ is not without merit.

Despite the faults pointed out above, the film is still very good, and well worth the student two-for-one ticket it cost. Go in with great expectations and you’ll come away slightly disappointed, but you’ll still have had two hours of laughter. Ignore the hype and you’ll come away happy and you’ll have had two hours of laughter.

*I wanted something more dramatic like ‘cackling’ or ‘giggling’, but they both imply a predominantly female audience, which is accurate but shouldn’t put men off seeing it – there were at least 10 of us in the full cinema…

Degree: 2.1

A funny film to highlight Wiig’s great writing/acting,

though the humour is often obvious and unintelligent.

The crass scatological humour doesn’t really do enough to offset

the 95% female cast, 90% of whom are almost pointless. Certainly doesn’t live up to hype.

Bridesmaids

Ever wondered what the hangover would have been like if it had happened ‘The Hangover’ has happened to a hen party? Well on 24th June you may find out. Staring Kristen Wiig in her first major on screen role (plus she also wrote it) as bridesmaid Annie who is trying to get through an expensive wedding on the cheap. Not very easy when you are the maid of honour. Full of both play on words as well as fart and poo jokes, this could be a sleeper film to match its male counter part.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

It might not be out in the UK till end of June 2011, but the teaser clip for Michael Bay’s third Transformers movie should not be missed. This film will be released in 3D which might certainly help the movie gross a huge box office since it has lost one of its big selling points, the lovely Miss Megan Fox. However, she is being replaced by a British Victoria Secret’s model so it is not all bad.