Review No.176: The Watch

You'd think I'd given up didn't you? Well oh no I'm back and I've got a mammoth slog to get through 15 reviews in the next few days. I might give up again though after having to relive my experiences of enduring The Watch an ensemble 'comedy' about a ragtag neighbourhood watch group that try to bring down some aliens. The film is apparently based on a script that Seth Rogen wrote when he was younger and I have to say I think there's a reason that it's been discarded up to now but for some reason some big name comedy stars decided to sign up. Frat Pack members Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller seem to still be harking back to the glory days of Dodgeball and Starsky and Hutch though both are a lot older now so the gags don't work as well. Stiller stars as Evan a manager of a Costco in the  small suburban neighbourhood of Glenview where he fill his days starting up clubs as he has no real friends. After his co-worker is killed and the police refuse to do anything about it he sets up a neighbourhood watch in attempt of tracking the assailants. Obviously his recruits are a useless bunch of  misfits and include Vaughn's hard-drinking spendaholic Bob, Jonah Hill's slightly psychotic Franklin and Jamarcus a recently divorced Brit played by the brilliant Richard Ayoade. Much to Evan's annoyance Bob uses the watch as a way to escape his family rather than help clean up the neighbourhood however they soon discover that Evan's friend was killed by an alien.. From there this goes into sci-fi comedy territory, think a much less funny version of last year's Paul, as the watch tries to bring down the alien invasion. Obviously all of the characters have their own issues Evan can't get his wife pregnant, Bob's daughter is starting to attract attention from boys, Franklin desperately wants to become a cop and Jarmarcus also has a secret that eventually gets out. Along the way there's swearing, plenty of sexual references and not many laughs. 

As previously mentioned Vaughn and Stiller try to capture the magic of their earlier comic successes however it seems that that magic has now disappeared instead replaced by the sight of two men not acting their age. Jonah Hill doesn't seem to know what to do with his career as he followed Moneyball with The Sitter and then 21 Jump Street with this where he essentially plays a psychopath. Even the usually hilarious Richard Ayoade is rendered unfunny here saddled with a character who basically has a silly name and likes Indian women. The alien plot is poorly handled while the individual stories concerning our four central characters are tedious and predictable. Even the choice of song in the obligatory group sing-a-long scene is a bad one as 'You Ain't Seen Nothin Yet' doesn't really have that flow to it. There's nothing particularly offensive about The Watch however there wasn't really much to like either as this saw four comedy actors purely doing it for the money. The final scene in which the quartet battle the aliens is extremely juvenile as we find out where the aliens' brains are kept I'll give you one guess as to where. Ultimately for a summer comedy there's very little to laugh and you hope that the four men, especially Hill and Ayoade, will go on to bigger and better things in the near future. 

Verdict: An unfunny comedy that isn't particularly offensive but has no merit whatsoever so I'm being generous giving it 2/10

Review No.175: What to Expect When You're Expecting

If you have been reading all of the reviews that I've been writing throughout the day then you're a stronger person than me but thankfully this is the last and ironically it is also the least. The big trend at the moment in romantic comedy films is to pack them as full as stars as is conceivably possible to make-up for the fact they are neither romantic nor comedic with prime offenders being New Year's Eve and Valentine's Day. Adding to that list is What to Expect When You're Expecting whose title is based on the popular pregnancy guide and whose script looks to have been drawn on the back of a fag packet. The story focuses on five different couples, all of whom are somewhat interconnected, and who are all expecting babies in one way or another. First we meet Cameron Diaz as weight-loss guru Jules who appears on a Dancing with the Stars like show and starts a relationship with her professional Even played by Glee's Matthew Morrison with her hilariously discovering her pregnancy after throwing up in their winner's trophy. As their relationship is in its infancy they struggle to cope as they're both strong characters and a big argument ensues over whether or not they should circumcise their son which is an issue which soon goes global. One of Jules' former clients Gary is also expecting a baby with baby store owner Wendy, played by Elizabeth Banks, with the pair finally conceiving after trying for absolutely ages so when Gary's former racing driver dad played by the brilliant Dennis Quaid reveals that he and his trophy wife Skyler are having twins it comes as a blow to the couple. Skyler's cousin Rosie, played by Anna Kendrick, meanwhile has a one-night stand with a former high school acquaintance and food vendor rival Marco which obviously leads to her getting pregnant and the pair having to become a couple instantly. Finally Wendy's go to photographer Holly, played by J'Lo, is planning to adopt a baby from Africa along with her husband Alex who isn't as sure that he wants a child in the house so she sends him off to be with a group of fathers led by Chris Rock's incredibly vocal Vic. The basic message of Kirk Jones' film is that life's hard and sometime's we don't get everything we want but as long as we both have each other then life is good. 

As there's five different stories here I thought there'd be different types of couples but two of our pairs are happily married while another have been dating for a while. While the situations involving Lopez and Kendrick are at least a bit different what with the adoption and the one-night stand I would've thought that a film set in 2012 would at least have some alternative views. For example What to Expect purports the myth that a parent needs a mother and a father but why couldn't there have been a single mother or at least a gay couple? I'm guessing the answer to this question is that this film wants to be as traditional as possible and despite the women in this film being presented as strong and independent there doesn't seem to be one character who thinks they'd be better off without a man with the case in point here being Rosie's story as instead of deciding that she wants to raise the child on her own she instantly gets the baby's father in so the pair can become a couple. As this was a comedy I was expecting some clever material but instead what I got was a long line of vomiting, urination, fat jokes and generally tired gags about what happens when you get pregnant. The funniest performers of the piece for me are Dennis Quaid as Gary's ultra-competitive father and Rebel Wilson as Wendy's shop assistant who has some brilliant asides while Chris Rock seems to be in a completely different film as he tries out some new stand-up material in his 'dad's group'. While I was watching I thought some of these individual stories would be good on their own especially Rosie and Marco's tale which I thought didn't have enough time dedicated to it despite the fact that Anna Kendrick is possibly the most talented of the five central actresses. I thought the script as well could've delved more into Holly's struggle with the adoption process but as it was she and Alex managed to get a baby fairly easily after just one home visit! The story that annoyed me the most was that of Jules and Evan which seemed to exist mainly to get a load of cameos in from Megan Mullaly, Whitney from The Hills and our own Cheryl Cole. Personally I would've expect more from Kirk Jones, who directed one of my favourite films in Waking Ned, but here it seems he's sold out directing 'comedy' sequences that I felt would be above him and overall there's not much praise I can lavish on the film other than to complement a couple of the performers. 

Verdict: A horrible mess of a film with far too much going on and too many cast members doing it for the money while Kendrick, Quaid and Rebel Wilson did at least bring something to the picture I personally didn't find it funny or original enough to award it more than 3.5/10

Review No.174: Katy Perry - Part of Me

It's hard to know what to write when watching films that are essentially taped concerts as they have very little plot to them which in turn makes for a very short review. When I saw the trailer for Katy Perry: Part of Me I thought it was simply a concert film with a little bit of DVD commentary thrown in for good measure however there was very much more to this autobiographical feature. Though indeed there are several full performances from her California Dreams Tour which took her all around the world from London to Tokyo and even to her own backyard but really this is a portrait of the artist and also it sees how she influences other fans. The start of the film is indeed her fans waxing lyrical about how she's inspirational and how she preaches the message that it doesn't matter if you're different or weird you can still achieve things, that is especially if you've got your own hair and make-up team, and this segment finishes off with a tape of the 16 old Perry talking to camera. Though I only really watched this because I had to I did in fact learn a lot about Perry including her strict religious upbringing in which she was only allowed to listen to Christian Rock and the only film she was allowed to watch was Sister Act 2 but not the first one however I agree with her parents that the sequel if far superior and much misunderstood. Eventually she went on the road touring her own music however it was far from an overnight success as she spent ages going round various record companies and at one point was so broke she had to ask her younger brother for money. We all pretty much know where the story goes from there as Perry's contemporaries, including Adele and Rihanna, talk about how great she is while we also see her family praising her. Though even now she still has personal issues as we well know her marriage to Russell Brand, a relationship that is really put under the microscope during the film, collapsed and the pair divorced soon after. The fact that Perry shows the aftermath to her divorce in great detail is a testament to her and personally I think it makes the film that more interesting as it does show her at her most emotional. Though the divorce almost means she doesn't go on stage we're left with the message that Katy is a professional and a chorus of Teenage Dream is all you need to get over all your relationship troubles.

I think the enjoyment of a film about a musical act sometimes comes from how much of a fan you are of that particular artist and for me I'm not the biggest Katy Perry fan. Her bubblegum pop is inoffensive enough it's just not my kind of thing however it's good to see that the lyrics are personal and that they do inspire other youngsters unfortunately they're not just for me. For that reason the performance footage did little for me despite the colourful staging, which we saw the planning of during one scene of the film, which takes its inspiration from surreal works of art including Alice in Wonderland. What I did enjoy was the backstory about Perry's upbringing and especially seeing her father doing some of his preaching you could sort of see where she got her love of performing from. The home video footage was also eye opening as we were able to view Perry from a young girl up to the artist that she is today and how each step made her what she is. As I already mentioned all of the scenes with Russell Brand were also fairly interesting as we saw him lurking backstage at her concerts and we also saw how their careers strained their marriage to an eventual breaking point. For me I found the film a little overlong mainly because there were far too many behind-the-scenes of her tour footage for my liking as each little element was explained in detail although I did like the names of some of her backstage team including her manager Bradford Cobb. At times my cynical side kicked in as I started to wonder if at least a portion of the film was created as an advert for her next tour however I think most Perry fans would want to see her on tour before watching this film and as was evidenced in Part of Me they are a fairly manic bunch. So to that end if you're a fan of Perry I would say that you'd completely love this movie and for me I found it interesting if overlong with colourful performances plus a mixture of highs and lows for the singer who had much more of an intriguing past than I first realised.

Verdict: As I'm not a fan the concert footage bored me somewhat while the film as a whole was overlong having said that her fanbase will absolutely love this and personally there was enough information here for me to at least appreciate Perry in a new light so for that reason I will give it 6/10

Review No.173: The Cold Light of Day

You wait for a review of a Bruce Willis film, or maybe you don't, but two come along at once nonetheless but if you were hoping for more of him after his handful of appearances in The Expendables 2 you may be disappointed. Despite appearing fairly prominently on the poster for The Cold Light of Day, Mr Willis' appearances add up to no more than about 15 minutes of the 90 minute run time so any fans of the Die Hard star who would be watching this film for him alone might want to look elsewhere. Willis plays Martin Shaw a man who has a job working for the government booking philharmonic orchestras or something to that effect, yeah right, and is currently in Spain with his family on a fishing trip. Arriving in Spain is his son Will, played by the new Superman Henry Cavill, who doesn't seem to have a great relationship with his father and they argue over Will's instance to make business calls while on the trip a decision that later injures his brother's girlfriend.  He goes to town to get some medicine for her but when he returns he finds his family missing and later discovers they have been kidnapped by some shadowy folks who want a briefcase back from his father who is in fact a CIA agent, shock horror! Will and Martin briefly reunite as we are introduced to his partner, Sigourney Weaver's Jean, who may or may not have turned against him to sell said briefcase and the bigger question is who exactly Will can trust. Later on in the film he meets a sexy senorita by the name of Lucia who  in addition to helping him escape may also be able to shed some light on his father's dealing in the past as the two have a slightly unbelievable connection. 

I think The Cold Light of Day has its roots firmly in the old school Alfred Hitchcock thrillers in which the action is all controlled by a MacGuffin, which for those not in the know is an object that moves the plot along even if it isn't that important, however that would be an insult to Hitchcock's collections of films. The MacGuffin here is the mysterious briefcase which everybody is after even though we never discover what is in it, though as Willis is here maybe it's Marcellus Wallace's soul, but I never once cared and that's the major problem with this film. There's a lot of running, jumping and shooting in the film however if it's all based on a plot point that you don't care about then everything seems a little bit pointless despite the fact that all the action sequences are fairly well shot. Personally I didn't think Henry Cavill was a particularly captivating lead but to be fair to the actor has little to work with playing a character who owns some sort of small business which is on the verge collapsing and who also has a poor relationship with his character. Willis is in his action movie default setting as he gets to both play the slightly brooding patriarch and the gun-wielding CIA agent in his brief time on screen in what amounts to no more than an extended cameo. The two performances I enjoyed were from Sigourney Weaver who makes for a tremendous central villain and British actor Joseph Mawle has her creepy henchman. The Spanish setting also means that the running, jumping and shooting gets some lovely backdrops to be shot against but I don't think this is fully utilised as there are more sequences in dingy clubs and dark houses than there on the streets of Spain. Though I did like seeing Weaver brandishing a gun and being badass there's only so much of that you can take in one film and due to the lack of any decent characters and a story that is fairly one-dimensional I got bored of The Cold Light of Day fairly quickly. 

Verdict: Though the Spanish backdrop and Sigourney Weaver's villainous turned did provide brief highlights overall The Cold Light of Day suffers from an uninvolving leading man, a threadbare plot and fairly dull action scenes so for that reason I'll have to give it 4.5/10

Review No.172: Damsels in Distress

There's often a fine line between quirky and irritating films with many finding the mumblecore genre a particular offender but personally I've never really had a problem with those sort of films until I watched Damsels in Distress which was at times amusing but another times fairly annoying. Whit Stillman's film sees Analeigh Tipton's Lily arrive as a sophomore transfer to a college in which she is soon taken under the win of Greta Gerwig's Violet and her minions Heather and Rose. The trio, who work in the college's suicide help centre, seem to want to cheer up students by having them learn to tap-dance while Violet herself is attempting to star a new dance craze. They also invite Violet into their world in which they often hang around with the fraternity boys as they harmless and dumb so they can be easily moulded into the perfect men however Violet's heart is broken when her intended man goes off with one of the girls they are trying to help. As Violet runs away from the college her friends think she may have done something drastic, with Heather revealing the truth about the real Violet, however she is saved by a bottle of hand-soap. At the same time Lily is going through some personal trauma over her own as she is attracted to the handsome intellectual French student Xavier who unfortunately already has a girlfriend so her eye is drawn instead to Adam Brody's cheerful Charlie. Eventually Xavier and Lily get together but his bedtime games don't sit well with her, and don't make her sit well either, so she turns back to Charlie however it is he and Violet who may have more in common. 

Stillman's Ivy League College world is somewhat old-fashioned in its design with our Damsels not paying any attention to what's going on on Facebook but instead marching to their own drum by walking in a dignified manner around the campus trying to help all the people they can. In the first twenty minutes or so of the film I found Violet and company utterly irritating and it is only really when we find out the truth about her that we become more sympathetic towards her while her relationship with Charlie also helps her seem like more of a normal human being. I personally think Stillman wants us to view the film through the eyes of Lily who is bemused by most of the antics of her new found friends but goes along with occasionally challenging Violet who is more than willing to be challenged because she's just that sort of character. Lily's assertion that some people don't want to be quirky but would rather be normal is one that would strike a chord with a lot of viewers of this film and I think in a way the director may be subtly hitting out at some of the same films of the genre. Thankfully his leading actress is Greta Gerwig who has great timing and delivery plus she's someone who is convincing enough as a student who thinks everything she does is for the greater good of the college but sometimes has a sense of self-importance. Adam Brody has some great chemistry with Gerwig and the two bounce off each other perfectly in the second half of the film as Violet gets closer to creating her own dance craze. I also quite enjoyed Analeigh Tipton as the 'normal girl' who suddenly finds her being charmed by a sleazy Frenchmen and taken in by a group of slightly offbeat females though again she more than holds her own. I do feel somewhat sorry for Megalyn Echikunwoke and Carrie MacLemore who have little to do as Rose and Heather respectively however the former does have a knack of repeating the line 'playboy operator' while the latter's romance with the brutish Thor is one of the comic highlights of the film due to the fact that he never learnt the name of any of the colours. Overall there's much to like about Damsels in Distress such as the lead performances, the lighter moments in the script and the way the college is designed but for me there were moments that I found deeply annoying which I think stopped me from enjoying the film as a whole. 

Verdict: With lovely performances from Geriwg and Brody as well as some truly funny moments Damsels in Distress is a somewhat likeable film however for me there were too many irritating sections so for that reason I can only give it a 6.5/10

Review No.171: The Expendables 2

More summer fun now as we enter the retirement home of action that is The Expendables franchise with Sylvester Stallone and buddies blowing more stuff up around the world. The plot of this new film is like the first one, somewhat unmemorable, however with an even bulkier cast plus a shorter runtime and a new director at the helm I found this one more enjoyable. The start of the film sees all of The Expendables from the first film team up to shoot down some bad guys or something before Arnie's Trench comes up and saves the day while soon after Jet Li says his goodbyes to the group. Bruce Willis' Mr Church then gives them another mission to go on with some new recruits namely Liam Hemsworth's idealistic Billy and Yu Nan as new technology expert Maggie Chan. While the group to retreive the mystery item for Church they're soon pounced upon by Jean Claude Van Damme's imaginatively named villain Jean Villain who steals the item, takes their weapons and kills poor old Billy presumably so he doesn't show up the rest of the oldies in the remaining battle sequences. From there the team travel to some desolate Eastern European town where Jean Villain is abusing the men as workers in a nearby plutonium mine and soon his men are on the case of our heroes thankfully though Chuck Norris is around to help them out however he doesn't stay too long as he is a lone wolf after all. From there it's business as usual as Stallone, Arnie, Bruce, Stath and the rest battle JCVD and his allies to the death but as there's a third film in the franchise I think we all know how things are going to pan out.

For me I wasn't a big fan of the first Expendables film finding it disorganised and over long while at the same time it didn't exploit the great cast that it was given with most of the scenes featuring simply on Sly and Stath. The sequel though is a vast improvement which I believe is mainly down to the fact that Sly has handed over directing duties to Con Air's Simon West, who knows what he's doing when it comes to ensemble acting pictures, and he tries to make the best film he can about a bunch of over-the-hill action heroes that he can possibly do. The Expendables 2, unlike its predecessor, doesn't take itself too seriously instead adding a lot of in-jokes about the catchphrases that our stars are best known for as well as some obscure jokes also. The fact that Arnie and Bruce are in the film a little more this time, after the former is officially out of the politics game, also adds to the overall feel of the film as a nostalgia-trip while seeing them fight alongside Sly and Chuck Norris is a treat all on its own. Talking of Norris his Booker is well-utilised and only has a minimal talking role which is good a thing as he's more useful when he's kicking ass and he does that a lot. As far as the rest of the cast is concerned with Mickey Rourke, who did all the acting in the first film, now departed it seems that Jason Statham has picked up that mantle and was actually fairly impressive however it is still his bromance with Sly that is the highlight of the piece. Elsewhere the other expendables don't do a lot, however Maggie Chan is slobbered over by her male colleagues to the point where she could've ordered some sort of employment tribunal while Hemsworth is at least given an emotional death scene. JCVD is always cast as a villain although he does have some of the more ludicrous lines of the piece he's able to pull them off because at the end of the day's it's Van-Damme whose even cool when wearing sunglasses in a plutonium mine. If you're coming to The Expendables to for a story and character development then jog on as there's little of that here however what there is plenty of enjoyable in-jokes, chemistry between the leads and the chance to see your favourite childhood action figures fight alongside each other. Personally I rather enjoyed The Expendables 2 which, while it had no story to speak of, survived because of the willingness of the cast to send itself up and West's competent direction so in summary a good summer action film which is all we can ask at the end of the day.

Verdict: There's lots of fun to be had while watching The Expendables 2 though due to the fact it has very little going on outside of its action scenes I can only award it 6/10

Review No.170: Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

It's true that the Apocalypse has been covered in many different ways over the years away from the obligatory sci-fi uses of the end of the world we've also had some more interesting efforts including last year's Lars Von Trier film Melancholia which divided opinion as I know people who both loved and hated it while I was somewhere in the middle. Playing the situation for laughs is writer/director Lorene Scarfaria, best known for her various work on indie films such as Whip It and Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, who presents a middle-management drone force to face the apocalypse on his own in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World. In the film Steve Carell plays Dodge an insurance salesman whose wife leaves him directly after hearing that all efforts to stop an asteroid hurtling towards the Earth have been in vain so he has to soldier on alone. When he sees one of his neighbours, Keira Knightley's Penny, crying on the fire escape he lets her in only to discover she's upset that she'll never be able to get to see her folks in England again while he finds out that his first love wanted to see him once again however he never got the letter due to Penny holding onto his mail. Eventually the two make a pact - she helps him get to his lost love and in return he'll get to a guy he knows who has a plane so the rest of the film turns into a road movie and inevitably the two develop feelings for each other. Along the way we see how the apocalypse has affected other people with the staff at a TGI Fridays-esque restaurant getting a bit more saucy, one of the people they meet getting bumped off by an assassin and one of Penny's exes building a shelter in the hope of repopulating the Earth. In the end things take an unexpected turn as the pair both find what they're looking for but find out it's not necessarily what they wanted.

If you take Seeking a Friend for the End of the World as a number of set pieces then it works a lot better than as an overall film. I enjoyed several parts of it including a party Dodge attends, Dodge and Penny's heart-to-heart at his ex-girlfriend's parents' house and the discovery of who owns the plane. The film also has some beautiful location shots which cinematographer Tim Orr utilises especially a later scene on a beach where Penny and Dodge discover a lot of lost people getting married. Where the film falls down is that I never felt the believable nature of the relationship between Dodge and Penny despite Carrel and Knightley trying their hardest to play two people who had genuine feelings for each other. Throughout the film we meet several of Penny's former loves, including Adam Brody's waster Owen and Derek Luke's survivalist Speck, both of whom seem to want to do anything to hold onto her however she only has eyes for the man that insults her several times throughout the course of their journey. Individually though the two leads do a good job with Carell perfecting the hangdog expression we first saw on him in Little Miss Sunshine while Knightley's quirky Penny veers on the right side of being annoying. There are also some great cameos from Patton Oswalt, Rob Corddry and one towards the end of the film which I don't particularly feel like spoiling as for me the revelation was one of the best parts of the movie. The soundtrack is also great, someone sitting next to me in the cinema thought so too as she spent a lot of the time singing along to the more recognisable tunes, thanks to Penny's instance of bringing her records along with her this is a film that really knows how to use popular music to advance the story. As a whole though I don't think the story always worked and I felt that after it ended it went on for another ten minutes which spoilt the overall film plus I didn't really understand why Dodge would choose to keep a dog that was left as his feet for the rest of the film even though it was incredibly cute. Though there is indeed a lot to like in Seeking a Friend for the End of the World it still feels fairly uneven and runs longer than it should've done even though I feel it does do a good job of demonstrating how normal people would react if the world were to end in a couple of weeks.

Verdict: Good performances, a number of winning set-pieces and a great soundtrack are spoilt by a lack of chemistry between the two leads as well as an overlong ending so for that reason it gets 6.5/10