YOUR HIGHNESS - Worst. Spoof. Ever.

YOUR HIGHNESS is an attempt at the kind of broad, slapstick spoof comedy so brilliantly done by Mel Brooks in his classics, YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN, BLAZING SADDLES and, to my mind, SPACEBALLS. The first problem is that while often as crude, or indeed cruder, than Brooks, it lacks the consistency of good jokes. The second problem is that it lacks a close observation of the material that it's spoofing. Because, as we all know, a spoof is really a kind of love-letter, and the best spoofs are wonderfully detailed in how they take apart genre-conventions. When you watch YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN you just know that Mel Brooks was a great fan of James Whale. Just as when you watch THE HOLY GRAIL, you know the Monty Python team was immersed in Medieval history at school. But in YOUR HIGHNESS you don't really feel that director David Gordon Greene or writer Danny McBride had a soft spot for epic quest flicks. The plot may have the right feel - two princely brothers go on a quest to rescue the elder's abducted bride to be, and fight wizards and ogres on the way. But the detail is all wrong.

So we are left with a movie that is as much of an embarrassment as the caveman spoof starring Michael Cera and Jack Black, YEAR ONE. In fact, it's worse because the cast is of so much higher quality, and many of them featured in one of my favourite flicks of 2008, PINEAPPLE EXRESS. The humour is broad - which is fine - I'm not a snob for elitist intellectual jokes. But they are not funny, and worst of all they aren't really aimed at the genre they are spoofing. Take an early example. Why does the wise old man who directs the quest with his gift of a compass have to be an alien? What does that add? Nowt. Or further along, why does there have to be a bunch of butt-naked cavewomen types? That's not medieval. It's just an excuse to show some tits. Not that I'm against showing tits - but let's at least attempt to have a genre-appropriate reason! What more can I say? James Franco, Zooey Deschanel and Natalie Portman should be thoroughly embarrassed that they chose to appear in this shit. And producers take note: Danny McBride, just like Zach Galiafanakis, is best used in small doses to spice up a movie, rather than being a lead role in which there juvenile aggressive antics will inevitably grate. And directors take note: improvisation works if you're Mike Leigh. If you are writing a joke-filled spoof, make sure the script is nailed down BEFORE you start shooting.

YOUR HIGHNESS was released in the US and Canada on April 8th and in the UK on April 13th. It will be released in Portugal on April 21st; in South Africa on May 13th; in Turkey on June 3rd; in Malaysia and Singapore on June 23rd; in Hungary, Norway and Sweden on July 8th; in Finland on August 5th; in the Netherlands on August 18th and in France on September 28th.

Miguel Arteta retrospective - THE GOOD GIRL

The only good thing to have come out of my watching YOUTH IN REVOLT is that it prompted me to look back at the career of director Miguel Arteta. It turns out the last feature he directed was way back in 2002 - the bleak tragicomedy THE GOOD GIRL. I really enjoyed THE GOOD GIRL, not least because I was pleasantly surprised that Jennifer Aniston would have the balls to play such an equivocal and drab character. I was even more surprised at how convincing she was in the role. The film garnered a lot of critical praise, and I guess its surprising that Arteta took so long to get back into features. It's slightly less surprising that Jennifer Aniston has drifted back toward the light and cheery comedy fare that made her name.

Anyways, back to the matter under consideration. THE GOOD GIRL is the story of a supermarket check-out girl called Justine (Aniston) who is married to a good-hearted but dull pot-head (John C Reilly). For no better reason than boredom, she starts an affair with a slightly creepily obsessive college drop-out with Catcher in the Rye delusions (Jake Gyllenhaal). Things get even more complicated when her husband's even more creepy best mate (Tim Blake Nelson) attempts to blackmail her with this knowledge.

What I really love about this film is that while the situation may be contrived, and some of the characters exaggerated (particularly Zooey Deschanel's brilliantly subversive store assistant), the emotional conflicts ring true. Because, at its core, this is a film about a typical housewife who finds herself settling for less than she had hoped for, and needs to decide where the balance lies between selfishly pursuing her happiness and disappointing those that she does, on some residual level, love. And it's about a woman wondering whether settling is really as bad as she thought itm might have been. The great thing is that Justine isn't just a plain vanilla good girl. She is fundamentally decent but does not some really questionable shit and makes some terrible decisions. It's rare to see such a realistic and nuanced character study outside of European art cinema.

If you haven't seen THE GOOD GIRL, don't be put off by YOUTH IN REVOLT. This is a great little black comedy that's well-acted, intelligent and interesting to watch.

THE GOOD GIRL was released in 2002 and is available on DVD.

(500) DAYS OF SUMMER - twee

(500) DAYS OF SUMMER is a hipster movie in love with its own kookiness. It thinks it’s being truthful about modern dating, and daring in its fantasy sequences. But what we really have is a romantic drama about a vapid, irritating woman and her schmuck of a boyfriend. The schmuck is played by Jospeh Gordon Levitt, taking a break from his typically grittier fare with an outing in G I JOE earlier this summer, and now this confection. He plays a greeting card writer and geek, who falls for the cute office girl. He wants a relationship – indeed he thinks he’s in one already. She refuses to “put labels on it”. You could interpret Zooey Deschanel’s character as emotionally scarred and, therefore, afraid of commitment, but then, right after dumping the schmuck, Summer marries another guy. The schmuck is understandably dismayed, as was I. It also doesn’t help that we don’t meet the guy who is so she’s suddenly so sure about it. Because of this rather opaque writing, the girl’s motives are unclear and her behavior hard to understand. The result is that, despite the innate charm of Zooey Deschanel, Summer came across as basically a bitch, and I just wasn’t interested in her, or in any man content to be screwed over by her. Harsh, but there it is.

(500) DAYS OF SUMMER played Sundance 2009 and opened earlier this year in the US and Canada. It is currently on release in the UK, Australia and Italy. It opens next week in the Netherlands and on October 1st in France, New Zealand and Taiwan. It opens on October 8th in the Czech Republic, Singapore and Turkey. It opens on October 22nd in Germany, Russia and Spain, and on October 30th in Finland and Norway. It opens in November in Belgium, Croatia, Brazil, Poland and Argentina. It opens in December in Slovenia and Estonia and on January 9th in Japan.