While EA produces a film adaptation of a racing video game, I go back to Dreamworks answer to Cars. It was... okay.
Theo is a simple garden snail who daydreams of a life of racing, motor racing that is. He has a racing driver for an idol, and his fellow snails laugh at him for his oddness. But one day he is sucked into a street racing car's nitrous oxide fuel and gains super speed. With a team of friends he works his way to compete in the Indy 500 race circuit.
Now... a lot of this film's success lies on how far you reject the absurd concept! I gotta say, it is ridiculous and I can't say I fell in love with the character or the supporting characters; they mostly fall into street racing stereotypes (voiced by Samuel L. Jackson and Snoop Dogg, for example) and Turbo's morality tale feels a little too carefree and inconsequential. Super powers solve your problems!
This is comparable with Pixar's Cars, where flashy oddball McQueen must learn humility and appreciate others. Turbo on the other hand is about his success and taking it all the way. While it is about a little man making it big, it is a little too convenient and centralised around his story.
Visually it is fun, Theo's transformation into a super snail is entertaining with his eyes turning into headlights... a gimmick that wasn't used again, but it was funny.
This is certainly one of Dreamworks more shallow experiences, which makes it quite forgettable, but it is fun at the very least. Also makes it a little hard to write about.
A mess of a thriller that had good intentions but just boils itself down to a generic action venture.
You know its bad when you start writing the review before the film's even finished.
Ryan Reynolds plays Matt, a low ranking CIA officer in charge of one of many safe houses and is looking for a promotion. As fate would have it, the CIA have to put a high-risk target in his care, an information trader Torbin Frost (Denzel Washington). But when the safe house is attacked, he goes on the run with a reluctant Torbin.
Honestly, the concept intrigued me. We have Reynolds and Washington playing roles fitted perfectly for them, a possibly dialogue-heavy thriller with a potentially claustrophobic atmosphere, a "safe house" (the clue is in the name...)
But no... the actual safe house barely features after the fifteen minute mark, and after that the film becomes an off-the-rails action chase film of the mid 1990s. We have constant car chases, constant gun fights and betrayals, our hero Matt (and the audience by extension) totally in the dark as to who persistently finds them, attacks them and attempts to kill them. Even Washington, doing his usual best, can't recover this uninteresting sequence of chases; so little of the film is dedicated to slowing down and letting the characters breathe.
For a thriller that obviously wants to keep you in the dark, by doing so it in fact makes itself incredibly predictable. With so few potential masterminds, and the ridiculous amounts of foreshadowing, you will know why everything is happening and who is behind it all long before Matt ever does.
A missed opportunity if ever there was one. This could have been a great example of characters parrying and fighting with words, involving mind games and intrigue (they set it up as much!) but it all dissolves into a noisy, rapidly edited action sequence. Quite disappointing.
I give it two cocoa cups mostly because of the two leads, who do fit their roles well and play it out perfectly for what they have been given!
So most of you might be asking: "What?? A Romantic Comedy, what have you done with the real Cinema Cocoa??"
Simply put, a relentless boss forces her assistant into marriage so that she can avoid being deported to Canada for a year and lose her business standing. They hate each other, but does this bribe become more than she can handle?
Its a romantic comedy, of course it does!
I don't rightly know why I was so compelled to see this, but it would be the premise mostly. The idea of a hard, emotionally-void business woman finding herself backed into such a corner she makes the snap decision to marry her assistant, an assistant who wants nothing more than the chance to take her down several pegs.
In this regard, the film succeeds. I really enjoyed the opening act and much of the second. Their office staff being in constant contact so they can message each other whenever Sandra Bullock's cold-hearted Margaret enters the room; "the witch is on her broom". Ryan Reynolds does well too as Andrew, a man at the end of his tether, reveling in switching the bribery around from time to time. It was what I was expecting it to be, but as such it was entertaining!
Then of course... the film develops the characters, oh, and they start having real feelings for each other, etc etc. There are some weird side-tracks in the second act when they go to Andrew's family's home in Alaska, for example Margaret finding his grandmother doing a tribal dance in the forest... What, what am I seeing?
A situation with Sandra Bullock, a small dog and an eagle was priceless though.
People wonder why I don't normally watch "Rom-Coms", and it is because they are often ridiculously predictable, and there's no denying this film is the same. I know, action/sci-fi films are predictable in their own ways, but these sorts of movies don't have the luxury of being blatantly fictional.
Oh, there's a wedding... hmm, I bet all my money it doesn't go smoothly. These people aren't leaving this chapel happy.
There will be a crushing reality moment where our lovers are separated, but heroically our man will run, climb, struggle through crowds in the dying minutes of the film to fix everything.
Yep, The Proposal isn't a film I'm likely to watch again, but I am glad I bothered to give it a go. It is a short, amusing waste of time, and most importantly, I could buy into these two actors playing these roles.
Additional Marshmallows: Another thing about Rom-Coms, look at that bland, uninteresting poster! Seriously, did a robot design that?
(and yeah, I will say the same about Skyfall's marketing for the same reasons!)
Dreamworks newest animated outing held a lot of promise in my mind, from a promising trailer showing some gorgeous landscapes, colourful creatures and good laughs. Yet while these are present, it didn't play out as well as I'd hoped.
The Croods are a prehistoric caveman family and the father, Grug (Nicolas Cage) protects them by being overly paranoid about anything "new" or adventurous. His daughter Eep however (Emma Stone) is rebellious and curious, and after sneaking from the safety of their cave she uncovers a new world... just as their world begins to end. Literally.
This film has some gorgeous animation. I want to stress this first as there was one specific moment where I was slack jawed; where the Croods dive and swim in water. The water effects were so startling and realistically implemented that the cartoon characters looked real by proxy! Does this one moment carry the film? A little bit, yeah!
There are some good laugh out loud moments, my cinema's audience were getting into it, especially the younger audience. The characters have disfunctional family traits that are rewarding as the film progresses (Gran is a particular favourite). The animation is dynamic and rapid-fire, almost like a Looney Toons cartoon at times, while the humour is often based around anachronisms and plays on modern living (but not unbearably so)
But, for all these good things... the story and plot just weren't there for me. Dreamworks has stunned me in recent years with some awesome storytelling and compelling character development (How to Train Your Dragon, principly) and instead The Croods... just feels like a sequence of unfortunate events; a scene happens, it ends, a scene happens... it ends (including the aforementioned water sequence...)
The characters are either one dimensional and sadly a little soulless, or very predictable. The characters themselves simply aren't interesting or unique to carry the film, and they are all we have, since this is effectively a road trip movie. There were really heavy emotional moments that simply died on me (and I'm a sucker for getting involved in movies normally!) The son and the mother, I barely know who they were except "the dumb one" and the... uhm... "supportive one?" respectively.
I don't know, but The Croods was a little too primitive for my tastes, despite how gorgeous it can look and how fun some of the moments are. A fun day out for the family perhaps, but I wouldn't be surprised if older audiences kinda shrug it off as yet another random cartoon venture.
Additional Marshmallows: And I have to add, I was really distracted by the... multi-coloured tiger/sabertooth creature. It had a weird, oversized head! It just looked wrong, I couldn't see it as a functioning creature; its head was the same size as its entire body almost!
Is it effortless these days to make a comic book adaptation in Hollywood? Well apparently somebody thought it was...
Now to bash Green Lantern now is pretty uninteresting; everyone knows it suffered extremely badly upon release. The problem I have with it is the storytelling; most superhero movies benefit from a strong message of humanity, a selfless act or becoming more than you are. Here though, a brash and selfish fighter pilot becomes an intergalactic peacekeeper of virtue, purely through destiny (and despite being rejected almost immediately).
Okay, so this isn't the first time for that story, but another character, seemingly down-on-his luck and buried beneath the disapproval of a politically powerful father, becomes a harbinger of death.
Now... I don't know about you, but I feel worse for the helpless man possessed by an alien force while doing his job, rather than the handsome, fit, womanising pilot who doesn't appreciate what life gives him.
I also think the lead woman must have changed characters midway through. A bossy, hard-as-nails fighter pilot is somehow reduced to a blubbering, love-smitten plot convenience by the end.
And yes, a lot of the special effects are dire. The CGI "lantern suit" and mask look goofy and there are some really shoddy composite shots, especially when you consider the extra $9 million spent to improve the effects...
Pretty poor. But then one of these comic adaptations had to fall eventually, to slow Hollywood's relentless productions!
