Tag: Harrison Ford

The Inbetweeners Movie / Cowboys And Aliens

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 CommonsAh, Thursdays. Child-free and cinema-bound…

The Inbetweeners Movie

“Ow, gentle on the sunburned cock please.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Four boys just out of school head off on holiday for sun, sea, sand, sex, booze, sex, drinking, sex…

See it if you like: low-brow British humour about poo, vomit, sex and more sex.

Way back in the mists of time was a film about two boys going abroad with the hope of getting drunk and laid. It was Kevin & Perry Go Large and it was utter ****. Released around the time that Harry Enfield had slipped from comedy genius to being as funny as syphilis of the face, it smacked of desperation and had as many laughs as a funeral on the banks of the Ganges.

So, The Inbetweeners Movie doubles the number of boys and sends them to Greece. It also adds jokes, some cracking dialogue, a great poo gag and a decent story – the latter quite surprising given the otherwise low-brow nature of the film.

Oh, and yes, it’s based on the similarly-named Channel 4 show which I didn’t even know existed until tonight. I assume the cast and characters are the same. Out of our little group we have a nerd, a pretty-boy who’s just been dumped, a sex maniac and a guy with lower standards than I ever had. So pretty much your average bunch of 18 year-olds.

Off they go to Greece to stay in the worst hotel in the world, while the dumped kid’s ex is wandering around the same resort and they try to cop off with four girls they meet on the first night.

So a thin plot, but some excellent scenes and brilliant comic timing from the cast and director. There are really moments where I sat there thinking, “Yeah, well, that was going to happ… no, wait. He didn’t!” It is possibly the best comedy I’ve seen since the first Hangover film, and probably done on a fraction of the budget.

If you’ve even got the slightest smidgen of immaturity in your body, go and see it.

Cowboys & Aliens

“It fell off.”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: Aliens are kidnapping people in the Wild West, which makes the folk they don’t snatch even wilder.

See it if you like: to disengage the old grey matter and revel in some old-fashioned sci-fi with a novel setting.

I’d heard great things about this graphic novel adaptation and the trailers held my interest. It’s certainly got a damn good cast with Harrison Ford as the mean old Colonel, Daniel Craig as the mysterious stranger and Olivia Wilde as the slightly weird looking woman (not typecast at all).

Craig is introduced, suffering amnesia, in the opening scene and the revelations as to how the titular Aliens fit in is revealed through his flashbacks. It doesn’t take long for the action to kick off, and the back story supports the set pieces well. It’s still a little slow at times, though.

It’s always good to see Harrison Ford these days – he does “curmudgeonly” so well, but Craig is on fire here. Jake Lonergan could take on James Bond any day and leave him begging for his mother. Imagine “The Man With No Name” with a headache, taking it all out on everyone else. Only cooler. And with scarier eyes. That’s Lonergan.

The effects serve the film well, and the supporting cast are up for the job. There are a few mawkish scenes which do jar a bit (the scene where one character is buried and words are said over his grave, surprisingly, isn’t one of them) and Ford’s Woodrow Dolarhyde changes a little more over the two hours than seems believable.

It’s not the best sci-fi film of the decade, but it’s certainly a fresh take with some nicely slimy aliens.

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Morning Glory

Unusual title for a film. Gill thought it was rather funny, though why she reckons green weeds used in Asian cooking are amusing is beyond me. We actually saw this as a “back up” when NEDS filled up. With neds, funnily enough. I’ve never seen so many shitty tracksuits in one place outside of SportsDirect.

Morning Glory

“He’s the third worst person in the world”

Plot-in-a-nutshell: busy-bee producer takes over beleaguered breakfast TV show and tries to turn its fortunes around.

I love an unexpected gem, and Morning Glory turned out to be one of these. It follows the same basic plot lines as any “small fry against the big guy” movie, and the two competing hosts who hate each other (Harrison Ford and Diane Keaton) story has been done plenty of times before.

Rachel McAdams plays the small fry, Becky Fuller, unexpectedly sacked when she expected promotion. She finds herself in at the deep end with another network, heading a show that’s about to sink.

So far, so predictable. Then enter Ford as the excessively grumpy Mike Pomeroy. A man who doesn’t want the job he’s forced into and who hates his co-host Colleen Peck (Keaton). Ford doesn’t actually turn the film around, the script just happens to go up in tempo when his character arrives on the scene.

The surprise star of the show, and the character who definitely gets the belly laughs, is Ernie Appleby (Matt Malloy). There weren’t many in the cinema, but everyone we could see was bent double with laughter at the point where Becky makes a desperate grasp for a ratings increase and Ernie the weatherman becomes her weapon of choice.

It’s predictable, it’s been done before, but it’s a great little movie. Ford and Keaton are simply superb – and Jeff Goldblum‘s near-cameo as the studio exec is a peach.

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