MOONRISE KINGDOM

Wes Anderson was, for me, a film-maker like Tim Burton.  A man with a distinct and beautiful visual style but whose tendency to rework the same themes, with the same actors, playing essentially the same characters, had begun to pall.  I particularly hated his last live action film, THE DARJEELING LIMITED, for its self-absorption, narcissism, rather exploitative attitude toward its Indian context, and ultimately for just being dull. With this in mind, I went into  MOONRISE KINGDOM with barely any hope that I would find the kind of film - at once whimsical and yet also profound (echoes of Tarsem Singh's THE FALL!) - that I had fallen in love with while watching THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS.

Well, my fears were groundless. MOONRISE KINGDOM is a simply wonderful film.  It is, of course, beautifully designed, rich in background detail, empathetically scored, and well-acted.  It affects a sweet yet knowing innocence - it's full of characters struggling to deal honestly with themselves and their loved ones - it deals with the darkest of emotions but it drips with hope - in friendship, in people doing the right thing - in family.  It's as if everything that began to feel so clichéd about Wes Anderson has finally been re-united with sincere emotion - and that this emotional authenticity has cut through the stagey-ness of the costumes, locations, soundtrack - and transformed a whimsical confection into something altogether more lasting, provocative and memorable.  It's as if Wes Anderson finally gave in and just told the story he always wanted to tell - about first love.

Suzy B (Kara Hayward) falls in love with an eagle-scout called Sam (Jared Gilman) one golden summer in 1965. The carefully hatched plan to leave together triggers a sequence of scrapes, jams, shenanigans, emotional revelations and deeds good and ill.  

Anderson perfectly captures that intensity of feeling when you're a kid and you feel nobody understands you apart from this one perfect person. Suzy's trying to escape her family - her kid brothers, her distant father (Bill Murray) and the mother (Frances McDormand) she suspects of sleeping with local policeman (Bruce Willis). Sam's an orphan and a misfit with a good heart. In one of the most affecting scenes, written in exact mimicry of how we speak at that age, Sam tells Suzy he loves her but she's talking nonsense for hating her parents. Suzy and Sam run away together.  They're at the age and living in the time when you're hold world fits into a suitcase, and you take your're favourite adventure stories rather than clothes. When you can place you're entire life into the hands of another person without second-guessing yourself.  

There's a deep vein of melancholy running through the film. Most of the adults seem desperately lonely, none moreso than Ed Norton's majestically decent scout leader.  The exception is the almost mechanical Social Services, played by Tilda Swinton with steely efficiency. But the kids are in their own world, where all things are possible, and where adults barely skim the surface, except as occasional constraints and only too rarely as facilitators. There's excitement and wonder and threat and crushing disappointment. As the movie builds to a pivotal final scene (superbly scored to Britten's Noye's Fludde) I realised that I deeply cared about these kids.  I wanted desperately to know what they happened to them, and not just to download the soundtrack they were listening to. It's been a long time, but we finally have a Wes Anderson movie that makes us feel as well as admire its surfaces.  

MOONRISE KINGDOM opened Cannes 2012. It is on release in France, Germany, Ireland, Turkey, the UK and he USA. It opens next weekend in Belgium, Iceland, Hungary and the Netherlands. It opens on June 6th in Sweden, on June 8th in Norway, on June 15th in Greece and Spain, on June 21st in Russia, on June 2nd in Portugal and Lithuania, on August 16th in Slovenia and Argentina and on August 30th in New Zealand.

BRIDESMAIDS - chicks aside, pretty conservative

BRIDESMAIDS is getting massively hyped because, contra-vention, it's a bromance starring chicks and, shock, horror, chicks sometimes talk about sex! The reality is that, once you get over the shock of the all-female cast, BRIDESMAIDS is actually a deeply, boringly, conventional movie with a predictable plot, pedestrian direction, and over-written jokes. (Not to mention a random Irish cop - they try to make a joke about it - but seriously, why?) It all just makes me deeply depressed about how reactionary Hollywood is that such a simplistic gender-switcheroo can have everyone salivating.

Anyways, on to the plot, such as it is. Kristen Wiig plays Annie, a thirty something woman whose life is falling apart. Her business failed, she is divorced, her fuck-buddy treats her like shit, her house mates are kicking her out, and her boss is about to fire her. When her best friend Lillian (Maya Rudolph) becomes engaged and, despite picking Annie to be her Maid of Honour, seems to be gravitating toward her new glamorous friend Helen (Rose Byrne), Annie has a mini-breakdown. The pressures of the wedding combined with Annie's low self-esteem, lead to her pissing off everyone who cares for her, not least Lillian and Officer Rhodes - a sweet police-officer whose attentions she scorns. Still, this being Hollywood schmaltz, you just know that all this pain is leading toward a moment of self-revelation, a last minute reconciliation with Lilian, and a Happy Ever After with Rhodes.

I didn't have a totally bad time watching this flick. It was funny enough to get me through the two-hour run-time, although I didn't as many did, laugh at Kristen Wiig's physical comedy and the gross-out humour of the entire cast. Rather, I was kept in play by Jon Hamm's hilariously oleaginous turn as the fuck-buddy; by Matt Lucas and Rebel Wilson as Annie's fat flat-mates; and by the normally very pretty Melissa McCarthy ugly-ing up as the butch Megan. I also liked how Rose Byrne managed to transform Helen from an out-and-out baddy into a really sympathetic character, whose insecurity was far more pitiable than Annie's. After all, Annie gets Rhodes while Helen stays where she is. Take a look at Rose Byrne's subtle double-take as she sees Annie look at Rhodes for what she thinks is the last time. Now that's good acting.

BRIDESMAIDS is on release in the USA, Canada, Romania, Slovenia, Iceland, Australia, Hungary, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Russia, Norway and the UK. It opens on July 7th in Greece, Hong Kong, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Portugal, Singapore and Estonia. It opens on July 22nd in Germany, Finland, Lithuania and Sweden. It opens on July 29th in Poland. It opens on August 4th in Denmark; on August 10th in France; on August 10th in France; on August 19th in Italy; on August 25th in Thailand; on August 28th in Spain and on September 9th in Brazil.

GET HIM TO THE GREEK - They fuck you up, your mum and dad - Part Three

In fairness, the people doing the psychological damage in the alleged buddy-comedy, GET HIM TO THE GREEK, aren't just the parents. The record label, entourage, management and fans all take the blame in enabling viciously damaging pop star behaviour. That Aldous Snow, self-proclaimed white musical Jesus, manages to retain any humanity at all, in the haze of adulation and exploitation, is a miracle. This movie is about how Aldous Snow, washed up, alone, makes it from London to LA to play a comeback gig in spite of various attempts at self-sabotage. He does so in the company of a fan-boy turned record label chaperone, Aaron. It's meant to be a laugh-out-loud comedy, giving the character who stole every scene in FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL more screen time. The problem is that while Russell Brand IS funny as Aldous Snow, he's also too good to leave his performance at the level of superficial pratfalls and lascivious word-play. Brand's Snow is actually a very sad man, and there's something faintly exploitative in the screen-writer, director and audience trying to find laughter in his pain. It's almost as though we're milking Aldous Snow in exactly the same way that his record company is milking him. "We know you're physically and psychologically harmed, mate, but go on, do that funny song-and-dance act!"

Maybe I'm taking it all too seriously. After all, this is a film in which Sean Combs is genuinely very funny spoofing himself as a hard-balled record exec. (I loved the line "you're three zippers away from Thriller"), It's a movie in which Rose Byrne is really very funny indeed as Aldous Snow's ex-wife and fame-junkie Jackie Q. Maybe I should just be happy with the laughs? But even as simple comedy this movie doesn't quite work. I know Jonah Hill is essentially playing the straight man to Russell Brand's comedy protagonist, but even then, Aaron could've been a lot more interesting as a character. Where's that slightly geeky creepiness that Hill brought to his cameo in FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL? And as for the scene where Snow tries to instigate a threesome with Aaron and his girlfriend (Elizabeth Moss) - excruciating just doesn't cover it.

The best Judd Apatow movies are both funny and touching. FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL isn't just great comedy - at some level we really feel for Jason Segel's Peter as he tries to get over his girlfriend, and we're really routing for him to get together with Mila Kunis' Rachel. Okay, we've probably never been dumped for a rock star, but I think everyone can empathise with Peter's pain - and even Sarah's despair at trying to make the relationship work. At the heart of all comedy, there has to be an emotional core we can relate to. The relationship arcs in GET HIM TO THE GREEK - between Aldous and his dad; Aldous and his ex-wife; and most of all between Aaron and his girlfriend - just don't feel real, and as a result I didn't care about them. The only part of the movie that felt real was Snow's addiction and loneliness. And I simply wasn't heartless enough to laugh at that.

Additional tags: William Kerr, Michael L Sale, Sean Combs, Elizabeth Moss

GET HIM TO THE GREEK is on release in the US, UK, Kazakhstan, Canada, Iceland, Australia, Georgia and the Netherlands. It opens in July in Greece, Portugal and Estonia. It opens in August in Sweden, Turkey, France, Finland, Norway, Germany and Spain. It opens in September in Denmark and Argentina and in October in Hungary.