ThisFilmIsOn

Hey Mum. I know you read my lovely joy-filled reviews and I know how proud you are of my wonderful imagery and way with words. Or perhaps you sit at home, weeping, wondering where it all went wrong, crying to the neighbours, “He wanted to be a Vet.” Well whichever side you’re sitting on please skip this one. Even I’m offended by the premise. Almost. And while I didn’t come up with the idea it just isn’t going to sit right with me if you bring this review up over Christmas dinner this year. It may spoil the turkey.

Now that mother has left I can inform you all of the (pretty wafer thin) plot and what exactly a donkey punch is. It begins with 3 girls and 4 boys getting drunk and taking drugs. So far, so Hollyoaks. But then things get a little out of hand with a 3 guy/2 girl fuckfest and one badly timed donkey punch (a sexual practice where the ‘giver’ of bum sex punches the ‘taker’ in the back of the neck, causing the taker’s anal passage to tense up thus supplying the giver with an increased orgasm) which causes one dead girl and three flaccid willies. The other girls don’t take this well (the dead girl or the flaccid willies?). Captivity, escape and blood all ensue.

I feel compelled to distribute a certain amount of kudos toward the creators of this for it really is quite an ‘out there’ premise. But ‘out-there’ can often translate to mean really fucking shit and Donkey Punch isn’t. Its not great either, and seeing the amount of four star reviews from critics saturating the posters is a cause for concern. I know its nice to have a British film do well but unless you write for Nuts or Zoo magazine four stars for this is just lowering the bar for everone else.

While its not quite the chav wank fantasy it may appear it still outstays its welcome and glides by on the ‘oh-no-they-didn’t!’ premise. The first reel is a guilty pleasure as you know these ‘party’ types will get their comeuppance. The pleasure in seeing vapid morons get deaded is as old as time itself but there really isn’t any surprise or shocks to get from this. In fact the most shocking thing was looking at my notes during the end credits and seeing the word ‘mum’ next to the words ‘donkey punch’. Chrsitmas dinner is gonna be difficult.

Pregnancy, it seems, is more in vogue right now than having your police officers have differently pigmented skin colours on buddy buddy action flicks of the ’80′s. First out of the snatch was Waitress (unwanted pregnancy), then Knocked Up (one night stand unplanned pregnancy) and then Juno (teenage pregnancy). No wonder the world is overpopulated to the point of suffocation so that every resource we have is slowly but surely running dry and the earth will soon be nothing but a smouldering garbage dump populated only by cockroaches and robots. Well Baby Mama is the surrogacy take on the pregancy film.

Due to her hectic businesswoman lifestyle (and T-shaped uterus) Kate Holbrook (Tina Fey) has never dropped any sprogs. But she desperately, desperately wants to. With her birth canal more likely to have abandoned shopping trolleys in it than babies she decides to put her eggs in Angie Ostrowiski’s box. The trouble is Angie is played by Amy Poehler which means her character is a) stupid, b) annoying and c) stupid and annoying. As the baby starts its descent the two become friends and much female bonding ensues.

That last part wasn’t a dig at Amy Poehler its just I’ve never seen her do anything but be a little stooopid. She does it well and the dizzy, uncouth hick is a nice counter balance to the witty sophisticated one-liners of the wonderful Tina Fey. A good idea to put Maura Tierney (Abby from ER) into it as she makes anything at least 23% better. The big surprise though is Steve Martin, putting in an extended cameo as Kate’s hippy aura reading boss. More of this type of stuff Steve and we may start to forgive the last 10 years of your ‘career’.

For the most part Baby Mama is a funny, warm hearted movie. A few twists help keep the film on track but the pat-happy, rushed and ultimately awful ending almost spoils all that has come before. The film is saved though by Tina Fey’s guarded cynicism. She is a genuinely funny woman who shared a few too many similraities with my first girlfriend for this movie to be a wholly enjoyable experience. Ah lost love! But then again I could never be with a woman who liked Chris DeBurgh. Never, never, never.

I’m not doing a full review for this because I’m still throwing a bit of a hissy about 3-D films. I did watch the whole film and put on the stupid glasses and everyting and yeah the visuals are more impressive than ever but I’ve yet to see a glimpse of a film where the extra dimension adds to the storytelling in any meaningful way. Its a cheap parlour trick and an excuse for studios to forget about the script entirely.

As they do in this. I don’t think Brendan Fraser touching me below the waist would have made this ‘experience’ of a film any less dull. Take away the oooh and the aaah factor (which some cretins will tell you is the point of cinema, its not, its really, really not) and your left with a dull pointless excercise in updating Verne for the 21st Century. Journey to the Centre of My Arse.

Thats not an invite its supposed to be a funny play on words. Please leave me alone. Please.

When you’re talking dream teams you’ll think along the lines of Obama/Clinton, Rooney/Ronaldo, Pacino/DeNiro, Jenna Loves Briana. And the names of Jackie Chan and Jet Li have to be pretty damn high. When your talking dream teams for (living) martial arts actors you can’t get higher. But its a shame that its been left so late. So late in fact that the former is 54 years old and the latter, no spring chicken at 45, has pledged his retirement from ever doing this kind of film ever again. If Jenna and Briana had left it this late I wouldn’t be watching their movie as often as I do.

The Forbidden Kingdom tells of a kung fu obsessed wuss Michael ’11!!?!!’ Angarano (just for you Emma) transported to China via a staff of justice, or wrath, or milk or something. There he teams up with Chan (drunken warrior) and Li (warrior monk) to save the Monkey King (Li, again) from the Jade Warlord. Its all told in such an 80′s way I expected Eddie Murphy to show up. Its The Golden Child with more monkeys, Yay! but less big titted snake women, Boo!

Having not actually seen that many Kung Fu movies, and only having watched Monkey whilst high as a kite, I know next to nothing about this genre. So I’m one of the worst people to review this movie. So stop reading and go make yourself a hat out of kittens or something. I can tell you that the fat guy in front of me was laughing and pointing out things to his fat partner every two seconds so perhaps there was lots to enjoy on another geekier/fanboy level. Either that or there were many scenes involving food.

As for the fabled Jackie/Jet face off, it was more than enjoyable (perhaps the weeing on his face thing was a step too far) but as with most extended action sequences its only real job was to divert you from the flimsy plot. Michael ’11!!?!’ Angarano actually takes the majority of the film away from the two stars and you can’t help thinking it might have been a better film had it focused more on him. Instead you wait for the masters to show up and do something bloody spectacular which they don’t really do. You yawn and move on.

Not since a Mr.Hitler stopped giving out free ice cream to orphans and pursued other interests has there been a man with a more checkered CV than Eddie Murphy. I’m not saying his films are inherently evil perse, but the dramatic downfall from good is simply breathtaking. Consider the evidence. Once the man made 48 hours, Trading Places and Beverley Hills Cop not 3 years years apart. Now he grinds out a living with The Adventures of Pluto Nash, Daddy Day Care and Norbit. On long winter nights I weep for you Eddie.

I’ll give you three guesses which camp this film falls into after a quick run down of the plot. Eddie plays Captain (thanks Imdb) who is the alien captain of a spaceship shaped like Eddie Murphy. He also plays the spaceship called Dave. With me so far? The Captain and his crew wander around Earth (as Dave) laughing at all the peculiar things us earthlings do, while looking for a meteor that can hold all the H20 from the ocean in order to save their planet. Any clue which camp we’re in yet people?

A fair indication of the quality of a movie can be glimpsed by the trailers before hand. Not always reliable but its like the warm up act before the headliner. In this case we have Wild Child, College Road Trip, The Rocker and The Love Guru. Surely this quartet of tedious crap would make the main event look like The Beatles and Led Zep with Jimi on harp. Sadly no. Instead (just to run this metaphor into the ground) its like watching Steps supported by B*witched.

The argument of ‘but its for kids’ will not stand in a year where Wall-E is skating about, so on with the slating. The jokes fall flat, the ‘message’ is boring and confused, the actors are detestable and the music (usually quite good in Eddie films) is bland. Smiling like a spastic with a twitch is also not suitable as the basis for a gag that never goes away. Saying all that it had two seconds of Its A Wonderful Life in it. Therefore its not the worst film of the year for during these two seconds I smiled like a spastic with a twitch.

There are some huge mysteries to be answered this summer. Will Heath Ledger pull off his most difficult role in his penultimate film? Will Get Smart be the big sleeper hit? Is Angus, Thongs and Full Frontal Snogging the worst movie title in the world? But the big one, the one thats keeping me awake at night, is, Does Meryl Streeps character take 3 cocks at once in a family movie based around Abba songs?

The answer sadly is No. Donna (Meryl ‘can kinda sing, is extremely flexible’ Streep) had three romances, seperated by weeks, over the summer of 78. This led to her offspring Sophie (Amanda ‘can sing very well’ Seyfried) not knowing who her father is. On the eve of her wedding she invites the three possibles Pierce ‘strangling cats’ Brosnan, Colin ‘whitest dancer in the world’ Firth and Stellan ‘Oh right! He’s Swedish, I get it’ Skarsgard. Hilarity, and Abba medleys to make Alan Partridge cream himself, ensues.

It goes without saying that if you have an aversion to all things EuroPopWank then this isn’t the movie for you. So this isn’t the movie for me either. At times you’ll scream at the screen for the horror to end at the butt clenchingly awful nature of the film. But… I can’t believe I’m gonna write this where actual people can see it…but it is ridiculously, ridiculously fun. And at times you kinda get taken away by it. Meryl Streep is perfect as the dick loving hippy and when she sings the worst Abba song (thats Dancing Queen by the way) she does it with such joy and nostalgia your heart actually lifts.

Thats not to say this is a good film and I’m not saying I liked it. For starters there is nowhere near enough plot to last two hours so its padded with song after song after bloody song and all extraneous characters are instantly shotgunable (I’m trademarking that word). But it has its moments. As for the 3 cocks at once thing I’m still not letting Meryl off the hook. My housemate who teaches Sex Education would have a shitfit at the quantity of unprotected sex this woman is having. Here’s looking at the sequel where she has to explain her herpes scars and multiple STDs to Brosnan all played out to the songs of Meatloaf. ‘Not a Dry Eye in the House’ would fit perfectly with that premise.

I’m usually one for the underdog. Tibet Vs China, Kidderminster Vs Chelsea, Rocky Vs Apollo Creed. Yet when it comes to Pixar Vs Dreamworks I’ll always side with the kings of animation. And I think I’ve worked out why; Simplicity Vs Complexity. Toys come to life, Fish lost in Ocean, Robot develops personality, each Pixar film is as easy to grasp as an Adam Sandler film. Thats not to say Dreamworks animation is dealing only with plots Stephen Hawking can understand but they don’t have that ‘in a nutshell’ quality.

If they did then Kung Fu Panda would be ‘Panda learns Kung Fu’ and who the fuck wants to see that. So instead its the story of a panda, Po, who dreams of being the best martial artist despite being a fat, clumsy useless blob (good casting in Jack Black then). Po accidently gets chosen as the Dragon warrior who will bring peace to China much to the chagrin of the ‘Furious Five – tiger, mantis, snake, crane and monkey’ and their Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman).

Theres something slightly disappointing in knowing that Dustin Hoffman is choosing to do the voice of an animated animal (is he a cat, a rat, a hamster? I’m still not clear after 92 minutes) over more ‘worthy’ fair. I’m not being a killjoy but this guy was Ratso Rizzo, Benjamin Braddock and Lenny Bruce surely theres a script out there for him to really get his teeth into. Its not like he’s bringing anything to the role that any voiceover artist couldn’t. (Yet another reason why Pixar are phenomenal, they never stunt cast).

Don’t quite no why I devoted an entire paragraph to that but there we go. The film itself is above standard fare in that it raises a smile but rarely gets a laugh out loud. Its also amazingly violent which should please the kids of ‘Broken Britain’ (todays scaremongering is brough to you by The Sun newspaper). In fact its so full of smacks to the face children will prefer it to the witty nuances and niceness of Wall-E. But then children are stupid. Oh and the Pixar wankfest is in full swing because I have seen Wall-E. I’m not going to review it just yet but suffice to say its one of the best films in the whole wide world. Ever.