iPad Round-Up 1 - THE CHANGE-UP

THE CHANGE-UP is a piss-poor reworking of the FREAKY FRIDAY/BIG body-switch movie genre.  In this instance, Jason Bateman's weary lawyer-father switches with Ryan Reynold's playboy soft-porn actor.  Despite the frequent cursing and references to explicit sex acts, this is basically a deeply conservative movie in which the father learns to appreciate his wife and children and the playboy learns to grow up and start acting like a responsible member of society.  The script, by Jon Lucas Scott Moore (THE HANGOVER) contains very few genuine moments of humour, but a lot of cursing and physical gross out humour that fails to fly. The direction from David Dobkin (WEDDING CRASHERS) is workmanlike. Reynolds and Bateman are actually quite good at mimicking each other's speech styles but in service of a weak script it's all for nothing.  Avoid. 

Script 

THE CHANGE-UP was released in late summer and autumn 2011. It is available to rent and own.

iPad Round-Up 3 - HORRIBLE BOSSES

HORRIBLE BOSSES has a simple concept.  Three likeable guys have three heinous bosses. One is a coke-head arse; one is a nympho; and the other is an egomaniacal dick. And so, they hire a hit man to despatch them.  Of course it goes horribly wrong - cue capers, shenanigans and laughs. Only problem is, HORRIBLE BOSSES isn't funny - just embarrassing.  Directed by documentarian Seth Gordon (THE KING OF KONG, SHUT UP & SING) from a script by Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley and Jonathan M Goldstein (all of whom have a background in sitcoms), the movie just never takes off.  And I'm not really sure why. After all, we know that the three likeable guys can be funny - Charlie Day (IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA), Jason Sudeikis (HALL PASS) and Jason Bateman (THE SWITCH).   I guess maybe it's the way the horrible bosses have been drawn and cast that lets the movie down.  Jennifer Aniston is a talented comedienne, as her time in FRIENDS proves, but by now her media personality as the dumped and slightly desperate ex-wife has started to colour how she comes across in film, and her performance as an aggressive nympho is just plain embarrassing. Kevin Spacey, serious man of the London stage, just can't do broad comedy as written in this film. And Colin Farrell as the cokehead just isn't given enough comedic material to work with. It's as though the writers thought that just giving him a comb-over was enough. 

HORRIBLE BOSSES was released in summer 2011 and is now available to rent and own.

iPad Round-Up 3 - PAUL

What is it about British comedians that they go to America, garner a little success, and then get the urge to mock the key difference between America and Britain - Christian fundamentalism. Don't get me wrong - people who believe in Intelligent Design give me the heebie-jeebies - but there does seem something rather odd, and pathological even - in these movies that delight in undermining religious belief. I speak here of Ricky Gervais' THE INVENTION OF LYING and, now, Nick Frost and Simon Pegg's new film, PAUL.

The plot is simple.  Frost and Pegg play two best friends and sci-fi geeks who attend a convention in the US. They pick up an alien who needs to get home, voiced by Seth Rogen, and so set up a comedy road-movie that could've been a clever satire on genre films, just in the same way that SHAUN OF THE DEAD brilliantly spiked zombie movies, or HOT FUZZ spiked cop films.  But  no, Frost and Pegg add a fourth character to their movie - a religious fundamentalist (Kristen Wiig) whose entire world-view is over-turned by her realisation that there is life on other planets.  

Of course this could've been as funny as anything in HOT FUZZ or SHAUN, but somehow - maybe the sensitivity of this material in the US, or maybe the real Hollywood money behind the picture - dulled their wit. (Or maybe it's that Frost and Pegg are without their usual collaborator - Edgar Wright?)  There are still flashes of the kind of ribald, laugh-out-loud comedy that we got in the earlier films, but overall this seems like a much tamer, and less memorable affair.  That unmistakeable damp squib sensation that settles in at about the hour mark isn't helped by a rather flat cameo by Jason Bateman as the spooky Fed, and can't be saved by a cameo from Sigourney Weaver. I also feel that Seth Rogen is straying into the territory occupied by Jack Black - that of always playing himself - even when voicing a CGI alien. 

PAUL was released earlier this year in the UK, Ireland, Belgium, France, Canada, the US, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Russia, the Ukraine, Australia, Croatia, Germany, the Netherlands, Estonia, Hungary, Malaysia, Singapore, Iceland, Italy, the Philippines, Denmark, Finland, Norway and Lithuania. It is currently on release in Sweden, Thailand and Turkey. It opens in Spain on July 22nd.

Random DVD Round-Up 4 - THE SWITCH

THE SWITCH is not half as bad as I thought it would be. From the marketing campaign, I'd written it off as one of those Hollywood romantic-comedies featuring an actress too old to really be playing the ditzy chick, given a new shot at features with plots featuring getting knocked up. (Think J-Lo in THE BACK-UP PLAN). Worse still, having been bitten too often by risible, banal Jennifer Aniston rom-coms - distracted by her botox and repelled by the smell of desperation coming off the screen - I was simply in no mood for it. But I have to say that, basically thanks to a rather restrained performance by Jason Bateman, I rather liked it! 

 Directed by Josh Gordon and Will Speck (BLADES OF GLORY) the movie starts off as a crude frat-boy gross-out comedy but morphs into something altogether more thoughtful. The opening scenes take us through the mechanics of the set-up with a sort of knockabout humour that entirely failed to connect with me. Kassie (Jennifer Aniston) has a party to celebrate getting artificially inseminated by hunky Roland (Patrick Wilson). Her best friend Wally (Jason Bateman) thinks she's making a mistake, gets drunk, accidentally knocks over Roland's semen and replaces it with his own. Years later, Kassie moves back to the city with her little kid - an introspective odd-ball, and as Wally and Kassie tentatively rekindle their friendship, he starts to realise that he's the kids father. We then get what is actually some rather touching character-driven drama as Wally opens up about his own childhood to the kid, and breaks Kassie and Roland up. 

There's a lot of mono-dimensional character-writing in the film, to be sure. Poor Patrick Wilson has little to do except be buff - Juliette Lewis' balls-out craziness is entirely unused - and Jeff Goldblum is the cliché promiscuous but basically lonely older sleazebag. But somehow, underneath all that, we get Jason Bateman's character really baring his soul. And yes, I think on balance, watching this film is probably worth it for Bateman. 

THE SWITCH was released in Autumn 2010 and is now available to rent and own.

Random DVD Round-Up 1 - COUPLES RETREAT

COUPLE'S RETREAT is a truly piss-poor alleged comedy starring Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman, Jon Favreau and Faizon Love as middle-aged men frustrated by middle-aged family life. So they and their wives (Malin Akerman, Kristen Bell, Kristin Davis, Kali Hawk)) take off for a tropical island and a weekend of intense marital therapy run by a spectacularly mis-cast Jean Reno. I just don't know where to begin in terms of reviewing it. It's a movie so devoid of comedic inspiration that it simply falls flat in every scene. I didn't care about any of the characters. I didn't find any of the verbal or physical humour funny. And I wanted the film to end. Quickly. Save yourself the trouble and rent Favreau and Vaughn's genius early pic, SWINGERS instead, and remember a time when they were able to create genuinely sympathetic characters and laugh-out-loud funny lines.

COUPLES RETREAT was released in autumn 2010 and is now available to rent and own.

London Film Fest Day 9 - EXTRACT

What is EXTRACT doing in the London Film Festival? It's not a high-brow art film looking for UK distribution. It's not the latest movie from an acknowledged auteur - Jarmusch, Egoyan, Haneke. And it's not a high profile glitzy premiere designed to lure the sponsors - a necessary evil. Nope. EXTRACT is an enjoyable but ultimately lightweight comedy from Mike Judge. Worse still, it's less conceptually interesting than IDIOCRACY, if better executed.

So, let's approach this as if it were just another Saturday night movie. Jason Bateman stars a successful businessman called Joel. On the surface he has it all: great house, great car, pretty wife, and his own business - a flavouring factory. But everything's going wrong for Joel. His staff are morons; his wife won't sleep with him; his neighbour's a creep; and he's falling for a con woman. Worst of all, his best friend (Ben Affleck) keeps advising him to do drugs and other crazy shit.

As the movie opens you think the con woman (Mila Kunis) is going to be the star but she drops off the radar. Then the movie almost becomes a bromance with Joel as Dante from CLERKS and Ben Affleck as his Randall. (Without the swearing and Star Wars jokes, of course.) It all feels a bit PG Kevin Smith. Stuff happens; Affleck, J K Simmons and the guy who plays Brad the gigolo are funny; a few laughs are had and it all winds up happily enough.

Not bad but nothing special either.

And will someone please give Mila Kunis a decent part?

EXTRACT was released in the US and Canada in September. It opens in Iceland on November 20th and in the Netherlands on April 29th 2010.

London Film Fest Day 5 - UP IN THE AIR

My friends typically work for former-I-banks, private equity houses and fund managers, and travel to at least one European or long-haul destination per week. They are nice, interesting people but every time we get together the conversation at some point descends into comparing airline frequent flyer programmes, blackberries and check-listing the best restaurants and concierges in various European capitals. We are the cohort that knows exactly the quickest route through any airport and always turn left upon boarding. But that's not all there is to life. Some have kids - some an unhealthy obsession with movies. We are all aware that the big corporates target insecure over-achievers: smart young graduates who will so identify with the corporate brand that their self-esteem lies in the coolness of their new laptop and how many miles they fly per year. It's as though the apparently elite status they have been sold compensates for working insane hours. Stick with it, kid, and one day you TOO can become a Lufthansa Hons member and make Managing Director. We too were once shiny bright 23 year olds, unleashed upon the world with dreams of summer houses and Porsche Cayennes. Ten years later, the 2001 dotcom crash and the credit crunch later, heartbreak, marriages, divorces have come and gone, and we'll settle. And no, it doesn't seem like failure.

I give you this little round-up to tell you that when it comes to reviewing UP IN THE AIR - the new romantic comedy from THANK YOU FOR SMOKING director Jason Reitman, I know whereof I speak, and I know whereof he speaks. Problem is, I think he's set up a straw man. The fact that he occasionally hits the mark with some biting dialogue doesn't make up for it.

Reitman's central character is a mono-dimensional corporate man called Bingham (Clooney). He's the classic air-miles junkie, happiest in the air, avoiding a real relationship with his family or a potential girlfriend at all costs. The movie is about how he reacts when he falls for a whip-smart woman who is just as career-focused as he is (Vera Farmiga). Along the way, he realises just what a shitty profession he is in (a consultant brought in to fire people) when he sees it afresh through the eyes of the new hire (Anna Kendrick). Reitman has Bingham go through one of those classic rom-com epiphanies, where the caricatured hard-ass central character realises it might actually be nice to have a relationship with someone. (See THE PROPOSAL, THE FAMILY STONE, MANAGEMENT et hoc genus omne). It even comes complete with a running through the night to tell the one you love that you love them scene. I only just forgave Reitman for that hackneyed move. The problem is that the really interesting dynamic isn't about ultra career focused people suddenly realising they'd like a relationship. It's about people, like the new hire, who do want both, know they want both, but can't seem to make it work out. That's the rub.

Anyways, let's be generous and grant that Jason Reitman's fictive career-focused lone wolf is credible and interesting. Given that, how does the movie work out? Well, I like the overall bleak tone, especially the final act twist. Totally brought it back from the rom-com vibe I was getting in the penultimate act. I also really like the way in which Reitman plays the scene between the career woman at 23 and the career woman at 33: very psychologically accurate and superbly done. Other than that, I thought the movie contained too much dead air, and much like THANK YOU FOR SMOKING, wasn't even in tone. Ultimately, I wasn't engaged by the characters, because the central struggle didn't seem real to me, and I thought Reitman didn't really have the balls to deal with the critique implicit in his subject matter of mass lay-offs. It all felt rather exploitative.

UP IN THE AIR played Toronto 2009. It opens in November in the USA. It opens in January 2010 in Australia, Spain, Sweden, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK, Russia and Denmark. It opens in February 2010 in Mexico, Turkey, Hungary and Singapore. It opens in Finland on March 19th.