Plot-in-a-nutshell: A new family on the block has all the new toys – and everyone else starts to want them.
SHOCK ALERT HORROR. This is a film with a pretty original plot. Possibly the first Hollywood one I’ve seen in a year or more. It’s not based on a book or comic. It’s not a sequel. There’s no “original version” or foreign film it’s based on. For this reason alone you should go and see it.
The other reasons are the cast, script and story. This is a neat little number that clocks in at 93 minutes so doesn’t drag like other films do. The Joneses move into a nice little suburban neighbourhood pretty much overnight. They have a ton of great gadgets, toys, food and the like. Product placement in this film is very much deliberate.
Thing is, the family have a secret – which is revealed in the trailer so I don’t mind giving it away here. They’re a fake family, sent there by an advertising company to “push” products subtly on the locals. However, there are consequences.
David Duchovny is great as the novice “dad”, his boss/wife played by an also-believable Demi Moore. They play well of each other as the story and their relationship change. The two kids (Amber Heard and Ben Hollingsworth) are also welcome additions to the cast and their characters add an extra couple of plot threads to the mix.
The closest film I can think of to this one is the excellent Arlington Road, another movie where everything hinged around people not knowing exactly who their neighbours are. OK, well, maybe The ‘burbs but that was a bit crap. The Joneses isn’t exactly up there with one of Tim Robbins‘ finest hours but it’s decent enough.
Frankly, it’s just good to see something fresh on the cinema screen that doesn’t rely on special effects or that rides on the coat-tails of some other media. An entertaining bit of cinema aimed at making us think a bit about the whole commercial culture.
Three pretty quick reviews as I’m dead beat and just want to crawl into bed – It’s A Wonderful Afterlife, Repo Men and Date Night.
It’s a Wonderful Afterlife
“Use guilt. You’re her mother. It’s your right.”
Plot-in-a-nutshell: Bonkers Indian mum is desperate to arrange a marriage for her somewhat chunky daughter.
Imagine a cross between Peter Jackon’s The Frighteners, Bend It Like Beckham (from the same team) and sorely under-rated Rowan Atkinson vehicle Keeping Mum. Of course, it helps if you’ve seen all of them. Each is superb -Â Afterlife plucks some of the juicy bits from them but doesn’t quite hit the winning formula. It’s still good though.
Mrs Sethi (Shabana Azmi) is a widow with two kids – an irresponsible son and a daughter who was engaged once, but (seemingly due to her girth) was dumped and now finds it impossible to find a new partner. In stero)typical Indian mother fashion, Sethi sets out to try to palm her off on anyone willing to take on a comfort-eating dump truck.
Thing is, she goes a little too far when some people turn her daughter down and… erm… kills them. Obviously, the police get involved – including Heroes‘ Sendhil Ramamurthy, who just happens to be a childhood friend of the daughter Roopi (Goldy Notay in a fat suit).
The two plot strands – marrying the daughter off and avoiding the police – are woven well, with four (to start with) ghostly companions following Mrs Sethi’s every move. The jokes are generally amusing, the acting very good and the special effects very simple and not showy.
The film does nod at a few other movies – the Carrie reference is actually more of a wild gesticulation with hands pointing and buzzers than a nod – so there’s the added fun of spotting the references.
Overall, fairly light-hearted given the subject matter and well-made. Given the fact that the cast and crew are predominantly Indian it does mean that they’re “allowed” to take the piss out of their own culture a little more than a non-Indian crew would, I feel – and this is great. If you can’t laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at. I thank them for letting us join in.
Repo Men
“Can’t pay for your car? Bank takes it back. Can’t pay for your house? Bank takes it back. Can’t pay for your liver? Well, that’s where I come in.”
Plot-in-a-nutshell: In a future where you can buy new artificial organs, there are a lot of people who default on the payments – and someone has to go and collect them.
Repo Men has little, if anything, to do with Alex Cox‘s 1984 cult classic Repo Man. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing in my opinion as I found that film to be rather… well… crap. As are many cult classics as far as I’ve found. But don’t take my word for anything. I thought Withnail And I sucked, so what do I know?
Jude Law plays Remy. Partnered with Jake (Forest Whitaker) they make the best repo man double team in the city. Anyone who buys an organ on hire purchase and defaults on payments for 96 days is automatically put on a list to have those organs retrieved. If they’re lucky it’ll just be one kidney. Or it could be a liver. Or a heart. Remy and Jake repossess them for The Union.
Thing is, Remy’s wife isn’t too happy that his job involved hacking people up and ripping out their metallic giblets. She gives him an ultimatum – quit and move into sales, or she’s leaving with their son. So Remy does “one last job”… which doesn’t go quite as planned.
Repo Men is quite bloody, given the subject matter this is hardly surprising, so if the sight of a bit of claret is likely to make you woozy then steer well clear. Also, if you’re into films with a deep and meaningful plot you might want to check out something else. Or indeed if you’re after anything that utilises the parts of your brain designed for piecing together great mysteries.
This is more of a schlock action film. There is a story and it’s OK. There’s even a twist but it’s pretty obvious what it’s going to be if you pay attention. What is does have is good action sequences and nice grisly effects.
No classic, that’s for sure, but if you want some gore and arterial spray to entertain you then this is one to catch.
Date Night
“He turned the gun sideways! That’s a kill shot!”
Plot-in-a-nutshell: A couple on a night away from the kids suffer a case of mistaken identity that leads to guns, gangsters, car chases, corruption and very sexy Israelis. Happens all the time.
Steve Carell is definitely a bit hit and miss in his choice of roles. 40 Year Old Virgin was superb. Get Smart was better than it had any right to be. Date Night plays like the latter without the spy stuff. Or most of the jokes. And less slapstick, shy of Tina Fey walking into drawers that have been left open.
Carell and Fey play Steve and Claire Foster, a married couple who find that life’s getting just a little boring. When their friends announce they’re divorcing due to their relationship going a little flat, the two decide to spice things up with a night out in a slightly more posh restaurant than normal. Only they can’t get a seat, so they pinch someone else’s reservation.
Obviously, the people they pretend to be are being sought by gangsters. Isn’t that always the way? Cue a night of being chased, shot at, hit and so forth.
In its favour, Date Night does have a couple of good laughs. The “boat chase” is very much a laugh-out-loud moment. Very well done. The car chase has a novelty element to it, so marks for originality (as far as my memory goes) for that. There’s even some tolerable dialogue.
However, it just plods along in places and overall it’s just not outstanding. The plot’s been done before, or at least it feels that way. The characters are cardboard and recycled from a score of previous films. The whole thing gets wrapped up ridiculously quickly towards the end.
I have seen far, far worse films but I still don’t understand why Date Night is getting such incredibly favourable reviews. It’s entertaining, but it’s not a comedy classic by any stretch.
Nope, not a clever blog post title, but the name of the film I caught this afternoon.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: A Scottish comedian bumps into an old school “friend” and finds out secrets about his past that weren’t what he’d have expected.
Crying With Laughter is dark. Very dark. If it were any darker you’d need to carry a spotlight in with you to watch it. For a film about a comedian it does have a few laughs but mainly it’s just pretty grim.
Stephen McCole plays Joey Frisk, a stand-up comic based in Edinburgh. He’s a divorced dad, a bit of a cocaine addict, an alcoholic and generally not really living the best of lives. His stand-up routine’s also a bit crap, frankly.
After getting kicked out of his flat, he finds himself up on an assault charge. He doesn’t have much of a defence as he was smashed out of his head and can’t remember the evening in question.
Enter Frank Archer (Malcolm Shields), the old school “friend” who Frisk barely remembers. For some reason he’s incredibly insistent that Joey attend a school reunion. And it’s not the kind of reunion you might be expecting.
As I said, this film is really very black indeed. The comedy’s fairly low brow, and the subject matter later in the film is not the sort of thing you’d normally find yourself laughing at. Thing is, the film manages to blend the stand-up and some amusing segues with a rather gritty storyline.
I spent the first 30 minutes wondering where the story was going. Then the next thirty wondering what was going on, but in a good way. I was hooked.
It isn’t brilliant. Perrier’s Bounty was brilliant. This is just pretty good.
OK, that’s a poor title but it’s the best I can do to encompass the two films I saw this evening – The Ghost and Whip It.
The Ghost
“They can’t drown two ghost writers. You’re not kittens!”
Plot-in-a-nutshell: After the initial ghost writer of a politician’s memoirs mysteriously drowns, a replacement is drafted in – just as some nasty rumours kick off.
First of all, this film is called The Ghost Writereverywhere except Europe. I have no idea why it’s changed here, and the end credits give it its original title. So if you’re in the US, it’s the same film.
Ewan McGregor plays “The Ghost”, a writer whose job it is to take someone else’s words and draft them into something resembling a book. For some reason he’s been cast as English, yet manages to pull off the accent pretty damn well. His job is to work on a near-finished manuscript when the original Ghost drowns while drunk. The subject – ex British Prime Minister Adam Lang (Pierce Brosnan).
Lang is very much based on a Blair/Bush combination. Slimy, untrustworthy and possibly guilty of war crimes. A lot of the things mentioned in the film were incidents that happened or were alleged to have happened while the gruesome twosome were in charge of the UK and US. This does influence the way the audience feels towards the character and adds a good dimension to the story.
Lang’s wife Ruth (Olivia Williams) is the other major player. Typical of a politician’s wife, she’s been in the background but it becomes increasingly obvious she’s been pulling his strings for some time.
This is a slow-burning film, but it never loses its way. It’s fairly taught and the central characters aren’t by any means unbelievable. MvGregor’s Ghost really is rather bumbling, not some guy who’s secretly a MENSA candidate or the next… whatever the guy from The Da Vinci Code is called. Throughout, it’s always tough to figure out if he’s making progress or being played. As a result, you really are kept guessing right the way through.
It won’t suit everyone as there’s a lack of high-speed chases, enormous set pieces or fast-cut hand-to-hand combat sequences. What there is, is a damn good story well told. It isn’t perfect – the ending with its superb twist is actually somewhat abrupt – but it’s very enjoyable nonetheless.
Whip It
“Yeah, let’s celebrate mediocrity!”
Plot-in-a-nutshell – girl lives at home with domineering mother, girl discovers outlet in the form of roller derby, girl must keep it a secret from domineering mother.
Bliss Cavendar’s (Ellen Page) mother is typicall mid-American (if the films are to be believed) and wants her daughter to follow in her footprints as a pageant queen. Bliss doesn’t know what she wants until she spies some roller derby bitches, attends her first competition and finds herself turning up for a practice session.
Needless to say she then gets hooked on roller skating, dressing like a tart and smacking other women around. This is by no means a bad thing. She also falls for the local bad boy, falls out with her parents, argues with her best mate and changes the fortunes of the team.
So far, so seen-it-all-before.
Whip It doesn’t stand a chance of pipping Dodgeball to the title of “funniest sports-based comedy ever”. Hell, Dodgeball managed it despite the huge handicap of featuring a Ben Stiller “comedy” character. Still, this isn’t a bad flick. Drew Barrymore is in it, so there’s eye candy, and she also directed it – I believe this is her first attempt. Credit to her, especially for the roller derby sequences which really give a feeling of being in the middle of it all.
Juliette Lewis is also a main character and I still don’t like her. Still, despite this, the cast are fairly strong and up to the task. Pretty much every stereotypical character and plot strand from this type of film is in there, present and correct, but it does hold its own. The ending may not be quite what you’d expect either…
I had most of Saturday to kill and managed to get hold of Tracey who also has a CineWorld card. The next film starting was Shelter so off we went.
Plot-in-a-nutshell: A psychologist encounters a man with multiple personalities, only the number of personalities seems to be increasing… and including people she knows.
I had no preconceptions about Shelter at all as I’d not even seen a trailer as far as I could recall. A quick check on the website said it was a psychological thriller which was fine. As an aside I was ridiculously tired when I went to the cinema so probably wasn’t mentally fired up for watching two hours of film, but never mind. I didn’t realise how tired until Tracey nudged me and said “You were snoring”. Don’t take this as comment on the film which was actually alright.
Julianne Moore plays Cara, a single mother after her husband was killed a year or so earlier. I last saw Moore in the rather enjoyable Chloe and she’s just as good in this although it’s not quite as good a film. Her father introduces her to Adam (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a man who seems to have a fair few identities kicking around in his head.
As she investigates these personalities, she finds there seems to be something linking them – but to tell you more would be spoiling the story.
There’s a bit of a mix of old-style horror, thriller and religious subtexts. Indeed, the film blurb focusses on the religious aspect and this does actually have a bearing on a plot point later on in the story.
While Moore is good, Meyers is excellent given the number of roles he’s actually playing as Adam’s personality expands and fractures over the course of the film.
It does get a little hokey and the very final twist is almost expected rather than being a shock. It’s still creepy though!
The fact that I only nodded off very briefly despite being so exhausted says a lot for Shelter. It isn’t a classic – Silence of the Lambs is a better thriller and Drag Me To Hell a better horror to grasp at two movies along vaguely similar lines. It does run a little too long but it’s entertaining enough and doesn’t labour its points.
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