Tag: Cameron Diaz

Bad Teacher

By إبن البيطار (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia CommonsDue to illness, lack of sleep and a hectic weekend we only managed to catch the one movie on Saturday. So sadly (or perhaps not) we forewent Bridesmaids and opted for the following instead. There’s nothing else new out this week at all that I could spot. Pretty unusual these days.

Bad Teacher

“Hold my ball sack?”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Crap teacher passes time in class while saving for a boob job

See it if you like: slightly gross-out and marginally edgy humour. Not to be confused with Bad Santa which was way funnier and far less politically correct.

The reviews for this were generally OK, which surprised me after seeing the trailer. Call me disaffected, but I’ve seen so many trailers where every joke in the film has been crammed into 2 and a half minutes that I’ve given up on a lot of comedies before I’ve seen them.

It was better than I’d hoped for, but not as good as some of the reviews have made out. Part of this is due to the trailer effect and partly as some of the jokes just aren’t that good. It’s also rather predictable. Cameron Diaz is well cast as the uncaring, dope-smoking, swearing, money-grabbing teacher who’s just looking for a rich sugar daddy. However, she’s well matched by Lucy Punch as the opposition – Miss Amy Squirrel who’s so nice you wonder why the kids haven’t ripped her apart and beaten her to death with her own dismembered arms.

Justin Timberlake makes another movie appearance and the best thing about this is it means we’re less likely to get another of his shitty albums if he spends time on screen instead. Frankly, I wasn’t too impressed with his turn in Bad Teacher – he was much better in The Social Network.

Jason Segel as the unwanted PE teacher and Phyllis Smith as the naive older teacher who just wants to be liked are both very underused characters. The scenes with Segel produce a lotof the best dialogue, while Smith’s indecisive flustering makes for some amusing viewing.

On the whole, a decent film even if it does give away a lot of our teaching secrets. Like the fact that the real reasons for getting into the jobs are the long holidays…

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Knight and Day

Another quick early morning cinema visit to VinCom Towers in Hanoi, this time to see the new Tom Cruise / Cameron Diaz action/comedy.

Knight and Day

“Nobody follow us or I kill myself and then her!”

Cruise has certainly become known more for his action films in recent years with the Mission Impossible franchise topping that list. Diaz tends to veer more towards comedy. Knight and Day is a wonderful blend of the two that works extremely well with a good story, witty script and ridiculous over-the-top set pieces (although too many are shown in the trailer).

June Havens (Diaz) is a “nobody” travelling back from a shopping trip in Wichita for her sister’s wedding. Roy Miller (Cruise) is an unbalanced rogue secret agent. Fate sees them share a flight where Miller reveals his true identity at which point Havens is caught up in a plot involving a stolen perpetual energy source.

It’s not quite up there on the silly scale with the recent The A-Team but it’s not far behind. It’s nice seeing Cruise playing a fairly off-kilter character and, in my opinion, this is one of Diaz’ best performances. Despite looking sexy, I always found her Charlie’s Angels character annoyingly dizzy.

As with most action films these days, a lot of CGI is used to make the stunts and set pieces far bigger than they should be. A part of me is growing to love this silliness, but another still harks back for the days of the early Bond films where everything was built, destroyed, fallen off and so forth by actual people.

Still, worth the 90,000d I paid for the ticket and the early rise to see the 8:45am performance.

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Shrek 4 – a Shrek too far?

Short answer – no. And if this is how the series goes out, then it’s on a high.

Shrek Forever After

“Do the roar”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: In a bad moment, Shrek exchanges one day of his past for a day back being a “real” ogre – but doesn’t count on the consequences.

OK, I’m in Vietnam and I’m watching western films. In my defence this one had Vietnamese subtitles. The cinema was also crammed and there was a constant undercurrent of little kids babbling and giggling. In other words, the perfect atmosphere.

It was also in 3D and from the childish “woah!”s and “oooooh”s, I’m guessing at least a few of the audience hadn’t seen a 3D film before!

Before going on about the film, something else impressed me. As I said, it was subtitled which is unusual for a kid’s film. Generally, in Thailand you get the film in English. And you get one dubbed in Thai (or whatever language elsewhere) as young children will not have time to read all the subtitles. I was amazed to hear the kids laughing at the jokes – not just the visual stuff, but the jokes. Given the ages of some of them it says a lot about their reading ability.

Anyway, the movie. Frankly I thought Shrek 3 was a bit of a disappointment. This is a return to form and a great end to the series with a couple of new characters and a great take on the existing ones. Shrek changes history with his wish and we get to see Fiona as a warrior princess, Puss as a fatty, Gingerbread Man as a gladiator and so on.

I may also say that Fiona – bar the green skin – is bloody attractive for a cartoon character. Especially in armour. I guess I’m a little weird. And, yes, I mean in ogre form. Hmm. Yes. I have issues.

Anyhoo, the laughs are frequent, the dialogue sharp, the visuals possibly the best I’ve seen so far, the story tight and the characters perfect. As ever, in my opinion, Puss steals the show with his lines, attitude and big soppy eyes.

There’s not a lot else to write without giving away the story, but if you felt let down by the last one – give this final chapter a shot.

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