ThisFilmIsOn

Before I get to the main hub of dismissing a childrens film for being too ‘fun’ I need to clear one thing up. The main character in this is called Speed. Speed Racer. Its not a nickname. Its his given name. Speed. Speed Racer. At one point during the film his teacher accuses him of being preoccupied with racing and at another his father asks him not to drive anymore. But his name… is… Speed. What the fuck!? Its like having a daughter called Cockgobbler Rimjob and then complaining that “she’s a little promiscuous”.

So anyway ‘Speed’ has been raised on cars. Loves ‘em. His reason for being if you will. With a mechanic father and a big brother whose the star of the track Speed’s destiny lies in putting the petal to the medal. When his brother starts ripping up his competitors like Michael Schumacher’s evil twin (not Ralph, he was a good boy) and then pulls an Ayrton Senna, Speed doesn’t decide ‘no this may not be the life for me afterall’ but instead follows in his brotehrs footsteps. Oh and there is some balls about race-fixing and big bad companies and saving the world through driving a car.

So to kick a kids film. Well its pluses and minuses all the way with Mr. Racer and friends. Pluses include spectacular visuals (if you can find a Digital copy do so, it may put me out of a job one day but this kind of film is perfect for the big D) and some quite touching family lessons about not selling out and yadda yadda yadda. If it wasn’t Goodman and Sarandon playing the parents it might not work as well but as it is, it does. Negatives include a way too lengthy running time and an unsurity (ooh new word) as to what the film really wants to be.

Is it a cartoon just for kids (the simian and annoying child actor who I’d like to drown in a barrel of monkey poop would suggest so), is it a video game with a bit more characterisation (the lengthy race scenes say a big hell yeah) or is it an anti-establishment punk piece (with the Wachowskis on board it certainly can’t be ignored)? The problem being that unless you particularly want all three in a single movie you’ll be aggravated by at least one of the other two. A bit like The Matrix then. To continue with the ‘doofus am I’ theme that occasionally runs through this blog, there is a twist that myself (and a fellow Masters student and psychologist no less) were bamboozled by. So then scarred by a PG and outfoxed by another. I’m glad I’m out of the playground or the tune of thicky, thicky shits his pants would ring out loud. But at least my name isn’t Speed.

There’s a lot to be said for documentary comedies. Firstly no matter how worrying the topic, finding humour in troublesome things is what sets us apart from the animals (except the hyenas). Secondly it makes people who usually get bored by facts and figures and other such things sit up and pay attention. A bit like the teacher you liked because they were funny and informative. But getting the balance right is a very difficult thing, crack too many jokes and you lose the respect, don’t teach ‘em and they won’t not learn nuffing.

Morgan Spurlock, the man who ate more Big Macs than any man has a right to do, is back to the feature film format after a small run of tv documentaries on More4. With a brand new baby on the way Morgan thinks the world is just not safe with so many bad things lurking around, top of the list being Americas Occasionally Most Wanted Osama Bin Laden. So just like every hero in the good ol’ action flick/westerns he was raised on, he sets off, solo, to find him.

While that brief little synopsis might sound like a kick ass movie if John McClane was on board what we get instead is a sympathetic look at the Middle East and its surrounding areas in a ‘see not all Musilms are mental!’ kinda way. While its a lovely message of peace and love and all such things you do get the impression that he’s just preaching to the choir. Any fan of Spurlocks work will be fully aware that the foreign policy of America is as fair as a wrestling match between Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson and Stephen ‘The Veg’ Hawkings. But that alone doesn’t mean the movie shouldn’t be made.

It just feels a bit like the cinema is the wrong place for it. Instead tapes should be handed out to every classroom in the country so that the little ones can learn from an early age that such things as politics and religion should be kept as far apart as humanly possible. While Morgan’s main joke of asking random people where Osama is falls flat pretty quick, the computer effects and the fact that he’s not spouting Michael Moore style tirades at everybody who doesn’t give their last penny to Oxfam means he’s just the right sort of teacher to get his message across. Film as education for the under 16′s. The petition starts here.

In my early days of ‘studying’ film I was told a story of African tribesmen being shown Gone With the Wind as a social experiment. The natives were sat down and shown the film in its entirity. They talked amongst themselves, occasionally jumped at the sight of fire, all the while transfixed by these moving images. Once the movie finished the translater asked the chief what their analysis was and he replied simply, “What happened to the chicken?”. The conclusion that was made; we learn to read film from an early age and all the tribesmen saw was image after image, the most notable for them was the sight of food. Yet even these tribesmen could tell you how Shutter was going to end after only 10 minutes.

A newlywed photographer and his wife move to Japan for the husbands career. On the way they pull a Halle Berry and run over a girl. When the police arrive the girl has up and vanished like a fart in the wind. Spooky hey? Then the girl starts appearing in photos. Wow its getting spookier! Its hard to write sarcastically but that was it by the way. Ten minutes in some of hubbies odious friends turn up and talk about his past being a bit risque. Oooooooh I wonder if the ghost is out for revenge or if she’s just dropping in for a cup of tea and a scone. That sarcasm wasn’t hidden as well was it?

Joshua ‘At least he’s not Dawson’ Jackson is the photographer whose past is creeping up on him while Rachel ‘useless in Transformers even more useless in this’ Taylor is the put upon wife. Neither of them are particularly terrible which is disappointing but they are both as bland as a Chinese Take Away’s English dish section which is reason enough to throw things at the screen. Although please don’t because I’d have to get a ladder out and clean it off.

There are some half decent shocks but they soon become tiresome when they arrive like clockwork to make up for the weak story. There’s only so many times someone can be in a room alone when they hear a noise, turn round, see that it isn’t the big bad ghostie and exclaim with gusto, “Oh its you! You scared the hell out of me”. I don’t see this kind of filler trickery vanishing from our screens anytime soon but to do it 48 times in one film is a bit sodding much. If they do ever show this to a tribe of African folk it might fool them the first time but by the end they’d be yawning and moaning along with the rest of us.

Fear not if you never saw P (there wasn’t a P), but do fear if you’re watching a christmas movie in May. Also fear if your watching a movie best described as a ‘killer in a car park’. I bet the producers shit themselves with joy when they heard that one. “People use car parks all the time!”, “It’ll do for multistories what Psycho did for showers!”. Except it won’t. Because its turd.

Kicking off like Die Hard with a lady and no terrorists (so not like Die Hard at all), Rachel Nichols (spell it properly!) is Angela Bridges a workaholic office type who is trying to get home to her family for Chrimbo Eve. Wes ‘Eyebrows’ Bentley’s security guard has other ideas and kidnaps Angela for a spot loving under the misteltoe. Cue 90 minutes of Angie escaping and then getting caught and then escaping and then getting caught and then escaping and all viewers losing the will to live.

As readers of this site will be fully aware I’m a cat that is easily spooked, horror not being my favourite genre of choice if I wish to keep my whites whiter than white. But as the year progresses I’m beginning to get an insatiable bloodlust for one reason only. The sooner these cretinous characters get their heads stoved in, the sooner I can get home and do something constructive like put my balls in a George Forman grill.

Wes Bentley is just awful as the psychotic security guard whose idea of being manic is waving your arms around like a monkey having a run. At one point the police turn up, look around, then disappear not thinking to search Wes’s aformentioned massive and evil eyebrows for a weapon. A very poor move by the NYPD. Unsuprisingly no one watched this movie at my cinema. Perhaps it was because its right next door to a big car park and people got scared. Or maybe its because people are not as stupid as I think they are. Or our best testing indicates.

A tube driver tries to get someone to throw themselves under his train so that he can scoop a big payday jackpot. What an outrageoulsy offensive movie!!! Except it isn’t. It isn’t outrageous. It isn’t offensive. It certainly isn’t a comedy. Because comedies are designed to make you laugh. This film can never, ever be accused of trying to make anyone laugh. Instead its the kind of film I’ll look back on my death bed and think, ‘shit, why did I spend two hours in my life locked in a room with such crap? I could have been pulling out my pubic hairs one by one instead.’

Mackenzie ‘Who did I blow to become a leading man?’ Crook is the train driver with the most miserable existence in the world. Such a sad pathetic creature that you’d rather be the people in front of his trains than sitting next to him while he drives. After accidently killing two people with his tube (that sounds like a very dark porno) he finds a third man who is willing to kill himself for a few quid. Then for some ridiculously inexplicable reason he follows him around for the weekend.

Why the suicidal man would want to spend his last 48 hours with the sour faced Crook is just one of many baffling things about this film. For starters the first 20 minutes contains precisly 107 montages set to popular music of the day, each one more pointless than the last. The film contains more padding than a pillow factory and is as tonally unsound as James Blunt fighting a deaf cat with a used vinyl copy of ‘BBC sounds of dying children Vol3′.

If it really wanted to be offensive it would have had a scene where a busload of disabled kids is plowed straight into a tree by the little midget guy from Amelie. But if you wanted to see that to get your jollies off you’d have to see The Oxford Murders, which I did and really wished I hadn’t. A lame DaVinci Codeish film thats only saving grace is a really big pair of tits on actress Leonor Watling. Quite breathtaking.

This film has to have been gathering dust, sitting on the shelf longer than the Eagle Eye Cherry CD I bought back in 1997 (I liked that ‘Save Tonight’ song, it was catchy). And while this review will not hit until May the release of it in April is just further proof that if a cinema goer wants to have a holiday then the month to do it is this one.

Ewan is a dweeby accountant who can’t get laid (Like looking in a mirror, except I’m not an accountant) until he ‘accidently’ gets holds of the mobile phone belonging to Hugh Jackman (sinister business type). This phone happens to have the number of a plentiful supply of female members of a sex club to which Ewan has a little dabble in when he meets Michelle Williams.

Falling instantly in love with someone you meet in a sex club is not a good idea. Especially if you are in a film called Deception. But regardeless of the title, there is nary a surprise to be had in this paint by not going outside the lines ‘Erotic’ Thriller. This lack of thrills is tripleified if you happened to catch Derailed a couple of years ago in which the same bloody thing happens.

That said there is a small amount of fun to be had thanks to the ‘up for a giggle’ cast. Ewan who seems to be getting younger and younger at the moment (of course this could be due to the fact that, as mentioned, this has been in limbo for a bit) seems to enjoy the nerdy ‘who me?’ aspect of his character, Hugh plays a badass for what I think is the first time and Michelle ‘you wouldn’t last a day on the creek!’ Williams is silent and blonde enough to convince as a Hitchcockian femme. The film as a whole however is just Cockian. I mean Cock. Speaking of which where was little Obi-Wan? Ewan + Eroticism usually = Full Frontal. Maybe his ‘chap’ is also reverse aging.

In celebration of The Eye, the story of a blind girl who gets new eyes and starts seeing scary stuff, and its monumental lameness he is a list of things I don’t want to see again this year. Like what I’ve done there? Yeah? YEAH?!?!?

1) Jessica Alba – In anything, ever. In fact this is not just for this year, but for all years hence until you can download acting skills straight to the cerebral cortex. As our best scientific estimate is this will occur about 2019 poor Jessies looks will have waned and she’ll have nothing left except to be all sickly nice and homely as warm apple pie. I hate warm apple pie.

2) Lovely Disabled People - Speaking of sickly sweet when will people realise that not all people with disabilities or fatal illnesses are happy life affirming people. Lets have a few more ‘Michael the blind pianists from Curb your Enthusiasm‘ please. Add some bitter, twisted kids with leukemia and seven days to live too thank you very much.

3) Opening and Closing Narration - Fair enough this is an auditory beef rather than a visual one but kindly fuck off with telling me what the set up of the film is in the first 20 minutes. I’ll work it out for myself and if I don’t then you’ve spunked up the filmmaking at some point. Don’t give me some pat ‘I’ve learnt something today’ ending either. Have you learnt nothing form over 10 years of South Park. Cocks.

4) Art Deco Cinematography - Just because you’ve found some wanky, minimalist building to shoot your shitfest in doesn’t mean you can frame or light a shot well. Framing and Lighting are there to enhance the emotional drive of the film. Go rewatch Citizen Kane. Yeah I did film studies. I’ve got a certificate and everything.

5) Predominantly Oriental Supporting Cast - We get it. You remade a Japanese film and you want to doff your crapcap to the original by putting in Japanese ghosts and Chinese restaurants. Here’s an idea, don’t remake a film to the point that you’re basically redubbing it, then you might not feel guilty enough to have to include ‘their people’.

6) Scary kids, scary jumps and other things that scare me - I just don’t like to be scared okay. So stop doing the whole, ‘its gone quiet, she’s creeping up to the door, 54321 -Boo!’ thing. Once the first 3-D horror comes out I’m literally going to shit into my nice white pants.

7) Saying ‘We don’t have a lot of time’ – The correct cheesy time is running out line is,’We don’t have much time’. Get it right.

If I see any of the aformentioned things again this year I will jab my eyes out with chopsticks and then add a Number 78 to the menu – Deep fried crispy eyeballs with Szechuan Sauce. See I can be patronisingly racist too. But I do it with irony so its okay.

Warning this film contains Youtube and Texans. The latter is the one place in the world I don’t want to visit, I don’t want to hear about and I don’t want to survive a nuclear holocaust. Perhaps its been unfairly represented, I know just one Texan and she’s a lovely well adjusted person, but if you believe the movies (and to the detriment of my life, I do) the rest of them are backward, gunfucking, line dancing twats. Of course not all Texans are idiots, can the same be said for people who use Youtube?

The plot is the tested and tired ‘some soldiers go to war and find out its not very fun and then go a bit mental’ (see also In the Valley of Elah). The twist on this tale is that after they’ve served their time killing innocent people and taking their paycheck some of the soldiers get a bit upset that they have to go and do it all again because of some small print that says “You signed up to be a soldier, we don’t have enough of them so you’re fucked haha you shouldn’t have taken us up on the idea of becoming hired killers quite so lightly should you?”

Ryan ‘poor mans Heath’ Phillippe is the heroic Texan tool that does the majority of the ‘its not fair’ toy throwing with his character going from God Bless America to America Sucks in under two hours. Occasionally he stops to think of those people he killed that wanted no part in the war either before, during or after, but dismisses them quickly and tries to find a lawyer to stop this injustice. Like the people of Iraq do on a daily basis. Ooooh sarcasm and politics. I am clever.

As for the youtube bashing that prefixed this review, I’m just pissed off with the ‘revolutionising’ of the media that I love (visual and audio storytelling) being turned into 180 second pieces for morons with attention spans shorter than their flacid and/or erect cocks. And any director that thinks he can summarise a complex war in the 3 minute ‘artform’ of compilations of two second shots of beaucoup bad shit is an idiot and deserves to be treated like one. Maybe make him wear a dunce cap for a month. And sit in the corner along with the whiny soldiers.