Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 13 April 2003

Johnny English become a spy by default when all the agents at the department in which he works are killed in an explosion.  He is called upon to guard the crown jewels at a special unveiling but as expected, he blows the job.  Given the chance to redeem himself, he immediately suspects wealthy Frenchman Pascal Sauvage (Malkovich) but doesn’t have the evidence to support his theory.

With partner, Bough (Miller), and another curious damsel, Lorna (Imbruglia), he begins his investigation.  As you’d be well aware, it’s one “joke” after the other.  He bumbles through the case in the tradition of Austin Powers and The Naked Guy to wind up becoming the hero.

Like so many other comedies I’ve been critical of in the past few months, Johnny English is terribly unadventurous.  The punchlines to most of these jokes aren’t required because we’ve heard them before.  Don’t you hate someone telling you a joke when you already know how it ends?  That suffering in the forced laugh you would reply with is roughly equivalent to the experience of watching this film.  The three-man screenwriting team is well behind the times in terms of its material.

Australian singer Natalie Imbruglia makes her motion picture debut with little fanfare.  Her own lines require even less effort than the hammy material she delivered in her run on Neighbours ten years ago.  I will not be too hasty in judging her talents though as the limited screenplay clearly contributed to her performance.  I also hope dual Academy Award nominee John Malkovich regrets his involvement.  His accent is lame and the concept is just really, really stupid.

Helping this package stay together are a few select gags which do hit the mark.  Sadly, I emphasise these being the minority rather than the majority.  An idea which is funny for a few minutes doesn’t make a motion picture.  That’s the lesson here.

Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 03 April 2003

We begin in the early hours of the morning with Barry Egan (Sandler) arriving at the dingy warehouse from which he runs his own business.  With a small number of ethnic employees, he produces and sells novelty toilet plungers with the foolhardy belief his business is successful.  With his mug of coffee, he walks out onto the deserted dawn street to see a passing car flip out of control and a courier van deliver a harmonia on the sidewalk.  This insane opening shouldn’t be as surprising for those who have learnt the lessons of strange chance and coincidence that Anderson taught us all in Magnolia.

Barry has a shy, awkward demeanour but unexpectedly, a darker side is revealed at a dinner party hosted by his seven sisters.  They jokingly, yet purposely, make fun of Barry and remind him of how they called him “gay boy” as a kid and recall the time he deliberately shattered a window with a hammer.  Before sitting down to the dinner table, Barry explodes in a fit of rage and smashes in a series of glass doors.  This guy has suddenly become more intriguing…

Lonely one night, he calls a phone sex line.  Connected to a 5’8” blonde named Georgia, he is duped into handing over his credit card details, address and telephone number.  The following morning, Barry is contacted by Georgia who threatens to blackmail him if he doesn’t hand over $750.  Barry’s sympathetic but not stupid and hangs up.  Soon, she’s calling him at work and threatening that “you’ve just made a war for yourself which you can’t afford.”

Amid these dramas, Barry meets a girl.  Lena Leonard (Watson) is smitten with Barry and begins a sly campaign to win his affections.  Lena has a passion for travelling and in planning a trip to Hawaii, hopes Barry will come with her.  He’s never had a girlfriend before and is reluctantly tentative towards her invitation.  Struggling financially, he finds a loophole in a marketing campaign where frequent flyer miles are obtained from purchasing certain brands of pudding.  $3,000 worth of pudding would give him over a million miles of free air travel.  Surely then, he’d be able to start travelling with Lena.

It’s an insane multi-layered black comedy that is supported largely by star Adam Sandler.  His character doesn’t fit a cinematic stereotype and he’s fascinating to watch.  For the first time in his lengthy career, he creates a character with depth.  You’re likely to find yourself studying his unusual mannerisms in the hope of understanding him.  The adorably sweet Emily Watson is superb opposite Sandler and wonderful cameos come from Anderson regulars Philip Seymour Hoffman and Luis Guzman.

Punch Drunk Love was a challenge to Anderson in that it’s the exact opposite of what people would expect.  He’s followed the deeply moving three-hour epic which was Magnolia, with a quirky romantic comedy clocking in at just 95 minutes and starring a critically ridiculed actor.  At just 33 years of age, it seems there’s no challenge too daunting or no risk too high.

His distinctive style is wonderfully evident here.  There’s a film score from Jon Brion which mixes classical romance with modern beats and rhythms.  Anderson’s camera is constantly on the move giving an enhanced sense of the surroundings and maintaining the lightening pace.  The lighting and colours of the film are perhaps the most striking aspect – there’s a mix of both light and dark scenes with deliberate flecks of colour finding their way onto the lens.  Visually, it’s the most creative film in recent memory.

If you haven’t had a chance to experience the talent of Paul Thomas Anderson, now’s the opportune time to jump aboard the accelerating bandwagon.  People like Anderson don’t just entertain.  They inspire.

Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 08 April 2003

Girls, wanna know how to lose a guy in 10 minutes?  Take him to see this film – there’s your answer!  Ok, I’m being a little harsh perhaps, but at the advance screening I attended, 90% of the audience were female and they all seemed to be laughing.  I was not.

The fat-fetched plot is based on a novel (believe it or not).  Andie Anderson (Hudson) works for a columnist for Composure Magazine.  She wants to use her journalism degree to cover more cutting edge topics (such as religion and politics) but her editor demands she concentrate on fashion, gossip and other trashy news.  Inspired by a friend’s broken relationship, her latest column is to be titled “how to lose a guy in 10 days”.  She’s going to meet a guy, have him fall in love, then do everything wrong to make him break it off.  The results will all go into print.

It’s time for Ben Barry (McConaughey) to enter the frame albeit under strange circumstances.  He works at an advertising company and with his all male team, is competing against an all female team within the office to impress the boss and secure the chance to produce a marketing campaign for a leading diamond seller.  The adverts are to appear in Composure Magazine.

The female team are visiting the Composure offices on business and overhear the idea for Andie’s column.  Then comes that one-in-a-865-billion moment.  The female team are having a meeting with the boss in a club to impress and pitch ideas.  Ben crashes the meeting to prove he also has what it takes.  By fluke, the conversation turns to love and the fact Ben thinks he can make any woman fall in love with him.  Lo and behold, Andie walks into the club at the exact same instant looking for the man to use as her subject.  One of the female team sees her, and has the idea for a bet.  Knowing Andie’s intentions, she bets Ben that he can’t make her fall in love with him in 10 days.  At stake is the choice of which team will get the diamond contract.

It goes on from here in a rather predictable fashion.  These characters are all spoilt brats and deserved to be smacked up and live a life of misery.  This of course will not happen but I can only dream.  This script could very well be the most unadventurous of 2003.  I’ll concede some chemistry develops between stars Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey towards the end but it is all too late.  My attention span was long finished by then.

With the film being classed in the romantic comedy genre, you’d think there’d be some “comedy”.  All the jokes are pathetically obvious and set up by stupidly unrealistic plot developments and lame acting. The laughter that kept echoing in my theatre was a little confusing.  Either I wasn’t getting it or those around me were just dumb suckers.  I won’t offend further but you know the answer.

Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 02 April 2003

Banned from school, Liam’s life consists largely of hanging around with his older sister, Chantelle (Fulton), who is now a single mother, and his best friend Pinball (Ruane).  All their lives are heading nowhere but the platform they were all given by the parents gave them almost no hope to begin with.

With his sixteenth birthday approaching, Liam yearns to create the loving family setting he’s always dreamed of.  There’s a small caravan with a seaside view on the market for 6,000 pounds.  If he could find the money to make this purchase, it would impress his mother, she would move in with both him and his sister, dump the abusive husband, and all would be perfect for the first time.

With the best intentions, Liam turns to the drug industry to fund his purchase.  He initially steals drugs from his father to sell on the open market but impressed by the eagerness of this kid, a big-time drug lord asks Liam to join his “organisation”.  The financial troubles are soon solved but his new employment and the release of his mother brings new problems for which the unsuspecting Liam is not prepared for.

Over the past few weeks, there’s been a wave of films released which first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.  The Pianist won the top prize with Punch-Drunk Love winning best director.  Sweet Sixteen took home the best screenplay award and appears worthy of the honour.  There’s a noticeable lack of stereotypes and predictable plot developments.  Liam is a good decent kid but some of the ill-informed decisions he makes will leave you squirming with discomfort.  The ending is surprising but not because it’s unrealistic, but rather because it is.  Few films dig so deeply as this by Ken Loach.

Filmed in Glasgow, the thick Scottish accents will be too much for any viewer.  Thankfully, subtitles are provided just as they were for Loach’s last film, My Name Is Joe.  Interestingly, both Joe and Sweet Sixteen debuted here at the Brisbane International Film Festival and both made the top ten list as voted by the audience.  Loach is a strong filmmaker who is taking his own slice of home and exposing it to the world.

Details

Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 06 April 2003

Dreamcatcher is a horribly confusing thriller which is always off balance and rarely making sense.  Four guys in their early 30s, Henry (Jane), Jonesy (Lewis), Pete (Olyphant) and Beaver (Lee) are on a hunting holiday out in the snow covered woods.  All of them can read other people’s minds.  On this point, the reason how they can do so isn’t clarified until well into the film and even then I wasn’t satisfied.

Anyway, with Henry and Pete out in the car, Jonesy and Beaver come across an injured man in the woods.  He’s suffering from mild hyperthermia, has a nasty red rash and an extremely bad case of gas.  They leave him to rest in the bedroom before joking about his situation between themselves.  Outside the window, they see hundreds of animals fleeing the area.  Exactly what are they running away from?

Mmm, should I tell you?  In the interests of giving the film a chance for those who do want to see it, I better not.  The script degenerates into a jumbled mess.  There are flashbacks to try to explain the past but seems to glaze over important details.  In the current time frame, Morgan Freeman and Tom Sizemore enter the picture as an important character but I cannot believe how small and underdeveloped their roles were.

The flick is adapted from a novel by thriller guru Stephen King.  Over 60 films have been made from King novels but Dreamcatcher is far from his finest works including The Shawshank Redemption, Misery and The Shining.  I haven’t read the novel but I assure you it must be better than the book.  As is always the case, there’s more room in a novel to explore details and it’s the lack of these details which gave this cinematic interpretation no chance of success.

Take a pillow also because it clocks in well over the two hour mark and there’s a fair chance you’ll be dozing during the later stages.  Director Lawrence Kasdan (The Big Chill, The Accidental Tourist) doesn’t extend himself and seems content to churn out this mediocre product filled with lame editing and plot inconsistencies.  The only plus are the visual effects which were created from a team led by Stefen Fangmeier (Twister, The Perfect Storm).

To insert my traditional lame joke, this film certainly wasn’t capturing any my dreams in what I’d like to see in a motion picture.  I only hope it doesn’t give me nightmares.