ThisFilmIsOn

There is one question this train wreck of a movie throws up thats worthy of any interest. What would you do if you had 88 minutes to live? Well I would hope that I live within an 88 minute radius of Jon Avnet so that I could kick him square in the balls. Hard. Because for the second time in as many weeks Jon ‘best thing on my CV is the producer of the Mighty Ducks Trilogy’ Avnet has vomited crap onto my screen. And he’s pissed on Al Pacino’s chips twice too.

After a series of quite unnecessarily horrible rapes and murders (shot more for titilation than to provoke a reaction of genuine shock) Al Pacino, forensic psychiatrist extraordinaire, puts away the bad guy with that underused skill of ‘presenting the facts during a testimony’. The boo hiss, definitely did it, bad guy (Neal McDonough) turns to him once the verdict is read out and chillingly says “Tick, tock Doc”. Ooooh time is running out for Mr.Pacino. So 9 years later, thats right 9 full years later (okay, including 3 leap years, possibly) Al gets a phone call telling him he has 88 minutes to live. Thats more like it.

Except its not. Because Al just goes about his daily business for 86 boring minutes until the killer finally shows his masterplan which, despite out hero being ‘the greatest headshrinker in the world ever Vol.3′, he walks straight into. But attacking this film for one such failing of plot logic would be to miss the point completely. For this is up there with Taken in the ‘so unbelievably fucking terrible I couldn’t stop laughing’ camp of movie. Yeah, sure, Al is as dependable as ever (rarely does he put in a bad performance despite starring in some real turkeys) but sweet Holy Mama this film blows.

The camera work is awful (see the crash zoom in the courtroom. For. Absolutley. No. Reason), the dialogue is laughably bad, it contains some of the worst (and most pointless) flashbacks ever commited to celluloid and it plays the red herring trick in every single scene. This is all supposed to build up to an ending of The Usual Suspects style brilliance but falls short of even being as clever as a typical episode of the Hubba, Hubba, Hubbas in Hoobland. While Taken at least had the guts to be offensive and bad, 88 minutes is just bad. And that kind of offends me more.

Those going to watch How to Lose Friends and Alienate People to see if Simon Pegg has sold out to Hollywood. The answer is he hasn’t. Those going to see it to see if its a faithful adaptation of Toby Youngs book. It isn’t. Those looking to see if its a Curb Your Enthusiasm for the big screen, not quite. But, more importantly than any of these, anyone going to watch this film needs to know one thing. Its a rom-com. Going in with this prior knowledge will help your enjoyment ten-fold. And thankfully its a very, very good rom-com.

Sidney Young (Pegg) is an independent magazine writer with a skeletal staff of bickering idiots. When the head of a major American ‘high society’ magazine (Jeff Bridges) offers him a job Sidney jumps at the chance. Instead of playing by the rules and doing as he’s told Sidney’s tactless approach to co-workers and stars alike makes him unpopular but noticed. When he becomes close to fellow journalist Alison Olsen (Kirsten Dunst) he begins to struggle over what he really wants. Fame or Intergrity?

The original memoir had Toby Young lusting over supermodels and generally bitching about the shallowness of celebrity while desperately trying to be included in it. While this may have been a lot of fun (and more biting) in a pseudo documentary format to make it as a ‘movie’ movie Sidney/Toby has to be more likeable. Enter Simon Pegg and writer Peter Straughn who make the lead not only likeable but, at times, an actually bloody hero. Yeah he can be an arrogant cock, he has a terrible case of foot in mouth but he’s moral, fair and in a world full of hypocrites these things stand out like a fat chick at an aftershow party.

With some great British quotable lines (“I’ve got cock on my hand”) and great American farce (the dead dog and stripper are pure Curb) How to… works well for almost all the running time. It loses its way narratively when its becomes clear just how its all going to end but with references to Its A Wonderful Life, The Big Lebowski and Star Wars all in the first reel and a stupidly heartfelt romance at its core it ticks many a box for me. Also it has the idea that working on writing with integrity and passion is reward enough. I have to say that personally…Bollocks to that I’ve watched 146 films this year, reviewed every one and no-one has offered me so much as a sniff at a paid job. My contact details are on this page. Someone please give me a fucking break. Then hopefully my Alison will follow.

Such is the potty mouthed nature of Red Belts screenwriter/director that he’s managed to be the inspiration for a joke. It goes like this. A businessman passes a begger and tells him ‘”Neither a borrower, nor a lender be” – that’s William Shakespeare’. The Beggar replies ‘”Fuck You!” – thats David Mamet’. Now I didn’t say it was the funniest joke in the world but it sums up one particular Mametism. Other Mametisms such as regular people being shat on and incredible performances are in spades.

Chiwetel Ejiofor plays Mike Terry a martial arts teacher who is not only the most noble guy in the world but also the nicest, most unselfish and quite importantly for a fight movie, the hardest man in the world. When he saves the life of Tim Allen (yes thats right Home Improvement’s Tim Allen) in a bar fight his life changes from the quiet, poor, but noble existence into one that brushes a little too close to a Hollywood lifestyle.

This being Mamet the dangling carrot of bogus happiness is quickly taken away and the people being shat on that I spoke of earlier is turned up to full. The shitters this time are the entertainment industry, from pay-per-view fighting to the filmmakers of Hollywood. At times the film reads like Bambi Vs Godzilla writ large. Which can only be a good thing.

There are faults, however. Plotholes seem to abound toward the end including some huge leaps of faith on the part of the audience and Mamet still can’t write women that aren’t fucked up or duplicious but as a Never Back Down for people with half a brain Red Belt works just fine. As for Chewies performance I’d be more than happy to see him in a tux come Awards season next year.

“If you were to ask me know who I am, I wouldn’t be able to tell you.” So says Charles Ryder at the start of this, what I thought was the 57th adaptation of the Evelyn Waugh novel but is in fact the first big screen transfer. Well as opening lines go its a pretty fucking good one and in my recent fragile minded state set me up to what I hoped would be a deep character study of a man unsure of who the hell he is. Unfortunately what turned up on the screen was a lame unrequited love story that finally caused me to use the word boring to describe a period drama. Something I try desperately not to do.

On his first day at Oxford University Charles Ryder (Matthew Goode) befriends Sebastian Flyte (Ben ‘Always be Pingu to me’ Whishaw) after the latter pukes through the formers window. When proper toff Seb takes wannabe toff Charles to his big ol house in the country, Brideshead, Charles begins to fall in love with the place. And while he’s not adverse to getting pissed, snogging and skinny dipping with the obviously gay, obviously infatuated Sebastian, Charles is also not adverse to trying to fuck his sister.

Which is where the film lost me because Matthew Goode does a fine job in making Charles Ryder an extremely sympathetic character in the beginning. When he’s being attacked by Sebastians snobby friends he’s quite fragile and likeable. At no point does it seem like he’s that bothered by the idea of jumping up a class, he’s just having some fun with a friend who happens to be well-off enough to drink as a profession. But his decisions later on seem like an uncaring arse who would fuck anyone over to get what he wants.

As the film tries to justify these actions by making his wife a bitch and Sebastian a mess it loses Charles character any clarity. If it just let him be a guy who doesn’t always get things right and someone who, really, doesn’t know who he is it could have been a lot stronger especially given the qualiy of actors involved. With the crazy Catholicism obessesed mom in the form of Emma Thompson and an aloof father figure in Gambon, the dysfunctional Flyte family could well end up on a 1930′s Trisha. But as with Trisha I’d really rather watch something else.