Film Reviews – by Adam Vaughan
Film of the week:
Other reviews:
Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Rating key – ◊ Total turkey | ♥ Drooping hotdog | ♥♥ Pick n Mix | ♥♥♥ Bit of fizz | ♥♥♥♥ Popcorn-tastic | ♥♥♥♥♥ Not to be missed
The latest creation from Studio Ghibli (Japan’s answer to Pixar), Arrietty is an adaptation of Mary Norton’s novel ‘The Borrowers’ (itself a 1997 live action film), the tall tale about a family of ‘little people’ living under an old house who borrow an assortment of trinkets not needed by their human neighbours.
Sho, who has come to stay with his Aunty while his parents are busy working, suffers from a heart condition and he longs to find companionship in the lonely surroundings. One night he sees Arrietty, the daughter in the family of ‘borrowers’ who is similarly searching for friendship away from her stern father and borderline hysterical mother. But she is forbidden by her father from mixing with the humans who warns Arrietty that they are too dangerous.
However, after an over-inquisitive housemaid, with curiously ambiguous motives, threatens to have the miniature family caught by pest controllers, Arrietty and Sho team up to protect the borrowers and keep their identity secret.
Director Hiromasa Yonebayashi and his team have fashioned an intriguing world – both big and small. Sho’s Aunt’s house has something of The Secret Garden about it, tucked away in a woodland thicket surrounded by sweeping hills bathed in warm sunshine. The earthy, organic decor continues into the borrowers’ house, smothered in leaves and flowers with an old plant pot for a fireplace and stamps for wall paper. Half of the fun of the film comes from noticing the intricate background details that are beautifully drawn.
It may not be as enchanting as Howl’s Moving Castle, as wonderfully uplifting as Ponyo or as fantastical as Spirited Away, but Arrietty is still a charming animation that should entertain the whole family.
The Inbetweeners (15) ♥
The UK’s answer to The Hangover’s wolfpack, Will, Simon, Neil and Jay are the ‘Inbetweeners’,
a quartet of socially awkward, potty-mouthed teens who, once out of school, head off to Crete for a lad’s holiday of debauchery. Cue binge drinking, bad language and general buffoonery as the group try to get lucky with a group of girls and go to great lengths to make utter idiots of themselves.
This is sure to play well to fans of the E4 series (of which I am not), but 97 minutes of these foul-mouthed, narcissistic social misfits was more than I could take. Don’t get me wrong, there are occasional funny gags – such as some questionable dance moves in a deserted club – and crude humour can work just fine if performed by characters you can empathise with, but, just like an ill-judged episode involving some literal toilet humour, the film hangs around like a bad smell. The only upside is that the gang aren’t as misogynistic as their American cousins.
Cowboys & Aliens (12A) ♥♥
The only fun to be had when watching Cowboys & Aliens, a postmodern mish-mash of two very different film traditions, is spotting the various nods it makes to its genre cousins.
The main riff comes from The Searchers/War of the Worlds when a backwater frontier town is visited by gold-hungry aliens who abscond with some townsfolk (for no apparent reason) resulting in a search party traipsing across the desert to rescue them.
Factor in a cast of characters you’ve seen elsewhere – Daniel Craig’s ‘Man with No Name’ who has a bracelet that can shoot down the interstellar invaders, Civil War veteran Colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde, a gnarly-looking Harrison Ford, a version of Gene Hackman’s draconian town leaders from Unforgiven and The Quick and the Dead, and a band of aliens that travel in Close Encounters ships (Spielberg is credited as executive producer) and look like a cross between Predator and a Cane toad – and you have a plot that’s just as barren as the desert surroundings.
This latest in a long line of comic-book adaptations seriously needs to lighten up. As it rides and flies through its various movie references, Cowboys & Aliens is both dull and derivative.
Rise of the Planet of the Apes (12A) ♥♥♥
The Planet of the Apes franchise has always held the potential to spill over into all-out farce with actors running around in overgrown ape suits, but prequel Rise of the Planet of the Apes does a surprisingly good job at keeping a straight face and neatly leads on to the 1968 original and 2001 remake.
Scientist Will Rodman (James Franco) is carrying out experiments on apes in order to discover a cure for Alzheimer’s, a disease his father (John Lithgow) suffers from. When he adopts a baby chimp, whose mother was one of the successes of the treatment, he soon discovers that the drug has the ability to enhance intelligence in chimps. Caesar (a name with uncanny relevance by the end of the film) learns how to sign, understand English and even starts to emote like a human. However, as Caesar grows older, he becomes increasingly incapable of fitting into the family and is an alien to his own species.
Following a violent event, Caesar is taken in by Animal Control and kept captive with other primates. Mistreated and taunted by one of the facility’s handlers (Tom Felton in a similarly spiteful role after graduating as Draco from Hogwarts this year), Caesar takes charge of the inmates, leading an ape uprising and breakout across downtown San Francisco culminating in a well-staged finale at the Golden Gate Bridge.
This origin story swings along at a swift pace. With the potential for some laugh-out-loud moments – such as an ape riding on the back of a horse and a gang of gorillas wielding iron bar javelins in the final battle – it’s a testament to the film that for the most part it allows you to suspend disbelief. There are also some eerie images with a conflicted Caesar standing over Will and his girlfriend Caroline’s (Freida Pinto) bed as they sleep and trembling trees as the rampaging apes run amok across a San Francisco suburb, hundreds of leaves falling onto bewildered onlookers.
Rupert Wyatt also directs with assertion, especially the film’s Shawshank mid-section when Caesar is incarcerated. Unsurprising considering his last feature was the prison drama The Escapist. But perhaps the most credit should go to unsung off-screen presence, Andy Serkis, who once again showcases effects company WETA’s technical wizardry as Caesar. After having played over-sized ape King Kong in Peter Jackson’s remake, and Gollum before that, Serkis has the monkey moves perfected here and is carving out somewhat of a niche for himself.
The Smurfs (U) ♥♥
Holy Smurf! The Smurfs have only gone and got their own smurfin’ movie! That’s right. Those diminutive dwarves with an irritating disposition to use their name as any adjective or noun under the Smurf have somehow managed to make it to the big screen – or should that be, blue screen.
Mixing live action with CG animation, their English-language debut (a 1976 film from their native Belgium did get a limited release) sees the critters chased out of their enchanted forest by hapless evil wizard, Gargamel (Hank Azaria) – a sorcerer who has clearly been taking make-up tips from Nosferatu’s Count Orlak – through a magical portal ending up in New York City, in a riff ripped off of Enchanted.
Once there, the pesky critters land in the lap of highly-strung and newly-promoted cosmetic marketing manager Patrick (Neil Patrick Harris) and soon prove a pain in the smurf as they disrupt his already busy life juggling his work commitments and home life with pregnant wife Grace (Glee’s Jayma Mays).
Cue some unoriginal slapstick involving power-hungry Gargamel and his ginger cat accomplice tracking down the smurfs for their happy ‘essence’ and some none-too-subtle life-learning with Papa Smurf teaching Patrick how to be a good father and Grace telling Clumsy that he has more than just one character trait. That’s The Smurfs’ problem – it lacks nuance and imagination. It’s hard to see the Smurf from the trees through the multiple throwaway nods to pop culture.
Younger viewers may enjoy the visuals, but Katy Perry’s Smurfette says it best once through the portal, “We’re not in Smurf Village anymore.” Perhaps they never should have left.