Film Review | The Holiday (2006)

On paper, The Holiday is a pretty average Christmas-themed rom-com, looking as light and fluffy as much of the snow which covers the chocolate-box English countryside in many scenes throughout its running time. But, thanks to a few fortunate additions, it manages to peek its head far enough above the middle-of-the-road line of oblivion to become a little more memorable than most in its genre.

The Holiday is based around the concept of two unlucky-in-love ladies, Iris (Kate Winslet) and Amanda (Cameron Diaz) who swap homes to give themselves a break from their usual surroundings in the lead up to Christmas. So, Iris vacations in Amanda's luxury Hollywood villa, whilst Amanda cozies up in Iris' tranquil cottage set in rural Surrey. However, it's not long before unexpected chances for romance turn up.

In many ways, The Holiday does nothing new. It's obvious from the moment Iris meets the unassuming Miles (Jack Black) and that Amanda finds Iris' brother Graham (Jude Law) on her doorstep in the middle of the night how things are going to end up romance-wise; it's just a matter of director Nancy Meyers playing things out. Things aren't much more original in terms of the culture shock both women experience - Iris unsurprisingly gets hopelessly befuddled with Amanda's keypad-protected security gate, and Amanda predictably drives on the wrong side of the road within a couple of hours of being in England. So far, so forgettable.

And yet The Holiday has a few pleasant surprises within it. First of all, the four leads all put in relatively strong performances. Yes, they're rom-com style performances, but nobody grates (although Diaz comes close once or twice). Jack Black in particular is pleasingly understated in a role, whilst not necessarily challenging, that certainly falls outside his comfort zone. There's also a refreshing subplot involving Eli Wallach as an aging Hollywood writer which allows the film to explore a little, and pay tribute to, the golden age of cinema. It's never anything incredibly deep or layered, but there's enough there to raise this a notch above the usual throwaway fare.

The Holiday isn't a classic, and it's modern fairytale, polished white middle class feel will almost certainly be enough to turn some away. It never threatens to be anything truly memorable, but it certainly does enough to make it lighthearted festive fare worth a watch just once a year.

6/10

Film Review | The Cable Guy (1996)

It's almost certainly easier for audiences to take in Jim Carrey's unnerving and darkly charged performance now than it was when The Cable Guy was first released. It's Carrey's inhabiting of the role that drives much of the film's success, so unless you can get behind him, it's unlikely you'll get much from the film as a whole.

Carrey stars as the eponymous televisual technician, Chip Matthews, who befriends Steven Kovacs (Matthew Broderick) after installing his cable for him. It's a friendship which swings wildly from the pleasant to the downright creepy, thanks in no small part to Chip's erratic behaviour.

The Cable Guy is at its best when at its darkest, with Carrey's demented turn as Chip at its heart. Borrowing from his rubber-faced repertoire only occasionally, this, along with his performance in 1995's Batman Forever, was the point in Carrey's career that he began to demonstrate he was more than just pratfalls and gurning. There are some more overtly silly scenes here - a friendly basketball match which escalates in the extreme being a prime example - but there are also plenty of moments, particularly in the final third, where Carrey along with director Ben Stiller show they can create something really quite unsettling. It's at these moments that The Cable Guy reveals itself as something more than just another wacky comedy.

It's a shame that it takes far too long to get there. With a relatively slight running time of just an hour and a half, this really shouldn't be the case. The first hour has some good moments, but there's also far too much here which simply doesn't do much at all. The cast aside from Carrey are functional at best, with Broderick doing everything he can to make you neither like nor hate his mawkish everyman, and the biggest achievement of the remainder being how many future big stars there are littered amongst them without any of them impressing you.

The Cable Guy ultimately evens out as something very entertaining but a little too patchy to be anything more. If the balance of the film was readjusted so that it took half the time to get to the darker and more successful stuff, and there was twice as much of it when you got there, this would be a classic.

7/10

Film Review | The Muppets (2011)

I'm a fan of the Muppets, but even I must admit their cinematic career is somewhat chequered. Whilst there are some entries into the Muppet canon I can happily watch again and again (such as The Muppet Christmas Carol, an annual festive fixture in my DVD player), there are others which really haven't aged well (1979's The Muppet Movie unfortunately falls into this category) and others that just weren't particularly good to begin with (1981's The Great Muppet Caper is, and always has been, decidedly hit-and-miss throughout).

The last feature-length effort from Jim Henson's creations to get a cinematic release was 1999's Muppets From Space, a somewhat amusing but ultimately flimsy effort leaving many to believe for over a decade that the Muppets would finish their collective film career on a whimper not even worthy of Beaker. Last year's effort, simply titles The Muppets, was a big opportunity for the Muppet brand to re-establish itself in the 21st Century. But is it possible to "reboot" the Muppets? Could Walt Disney Studios, who now own the Muppet brand, make something as overtly low-tech as hand-puppetry appeal on a cinematic scale to an audience who now take for granted the computer wizardry pioneered by another Disney-owned studio, Pixar?

The film tells the story of Walter, a life-long Muppet fan who travels to Muppet Studios with his brother Gary (Jason Segel) and Gary's girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams), only to discover that oil tycoon Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) plans to buy the studios and demolish them and the Muppet theatre to drill for oil. It's down to Walter, Gary and Mary to reunite the Muppets, who haven't worked together in years, and help them save the theatre and studios before it's too late.

The Muppets is a real pleasure to watch from start to finish. Adams is reliably charming, bringing the same gusto to her role as seen in 2007's Enchanted; Segel too is pleasing and enjoyable, clearly showing himself to be a genuine fan of the Muppets (he also co-wrote and co-produced the film) through his heartfelt performance. Cooper clearly has huge fun in his antagonistic role as Tex Richman, chewing the scenery brilliantly throughout. The Muppets themselves are as emotive and genuine as ever; it's a real pleasure to see Jim Henson's creations back on top form on the big screen. Walter too is a welcome addition to the Muppet family - sincere, funny and endlessly likeable from start to finish

Both humans and Muppets are held together by a solid script with plenty of humour and many laugh-out-loud moments; only a couple of jokes in the whole thing fail to hit their mark. The songs of Bret McKenzie (of Flight Of The Conchords fame) are infectious and rich, making me want to hear them again as soon as they'd finished. "Man Or Muppet" won McKenzie an Academy Award at this year's Oscars, but in truth there are three or four more equally brilliant songs throughout, such as the contagiously chirpy "Life's A Happy Song" and heart-melting lament "Pictures In My Head".

The key to The Muppets' near-comprehensive success however, is the perfect tone struck from the opening scenes to the musical finale: writers Segel and Nicholas Stoller, as well as director James Bobin, are acutely aware of the old-fashioned and "uncool" status the Muppets potentially hold in modern popular culture, and play off this superbly. This is not a reboot, nor is this the director attempting to gain the Muppets a new target audience; whilst there is much here that may well appeal to young children, much of the humour and references (particularly to classic Muppet movies) are aimed squarely at those who would have been children when the Muppets were in their heyday and are now grown up. The big names involved, from those already mentioned in key roles to those in cameos and bit parts, are completely on board with this. The result is immensely enjoyable.

There are elements of the film that can justifiably be criticised: the plot is episodic and at times a little predictable, but it never tries to be anything else nor does it need to be. Due to this being their first big outing in twelve years, some Muppets do become sidelined including some of the bigger names (aside from one key sequence, Gonzo gets surprisingly little screen time; and whilst Beaker is present, Bunsen Honeydew gets just a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance), which inevitably means some viewers will be disappointed that their favourite wasn't in it more.

In truth, these are minor grievances in what is an overwhelmingly positive first film of the 21st Century for Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear and the rest of the gang. It probably won't win many new Muppet converts, but that's never the aim of Bobin's film. This is all about pure entertainment and enjoyment, and reigniting that in long-time Muppet fans who may have forgotten how much fun is to be had when it's time to play the music, and it's time to light the lights. Cinematic technology can, and undoubtedly will, advance further and further; but the Muppets are longstanding proof that with an irrepressible heart, desire and talent to entertain, you need nothing more than some foam, felt and googly eyes.

8/10

Film Review | Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)

Generally speaking, it's a good time to be a fan of computer animated films. With such superb quality output from the likes of Pixar, the bar being raised so high also means other studios have to up their game more and more to be able to compete. This means even more great offerings for cinema-goers; but the flipside, of course, is that even if a computer animated film hits the mark in many ways, it can quickly go from being a resounding success to falling into the chasm of good-but-not-great oblivion by slipping up in only one or two areas. Unfortunately, this is the tale for Kung Fu Panda 2.

The film picks up a short while after the end of the first film, with the eponymous black and white bear Po (Jack Black) now established as the Dragon Warrior and continuing to fight and train alongside the Furious Five and Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman). However, a new threat is posed by Lord Shen (Gary Oldman) who harnesses the power of fireworks to create a weapon so powerful it could bring an end to kung fu.

Kung Fu Panda 2 does a lot of things right. In terms of animation, it's almost certainly the most technically proficient and visually impressive film DreamWorks have produced so far. The style of animation is carried over well from the first film, giving the world created a pleasingly authentic Chinese mythological feel. There are also more hand drawn segments included throughout the film than in the first, which fit in well with the aesthetic of the story. The way in which Po's back story is fleshed out in the film is commendable, as it would have been very easy for the studio to simply churn out a brightly-coloured fight fest with no heart that kids would have still lapped up.

With all of this going for it, and being a fan of the original movie, I really wanted to like Kung Fu Panda 2 a lot. But the problems are too big to ignore. The story feels very rushed at the start, then stretched out too much over the middle acts, making things feel pretty uneven overall. The script too feels pedestrian, with much less personality and humour than in the first film. And whilst there are some impressive action and fight sequences throughout, there are also some which feel too busy and confused to enjoy, a la Transformers.

The only vocal performance worthy of praise is that of Oldman, who hams it up a treat as the maleficent peacock Shen and steals every scene he's in. Black's performance is uninspired with the comedian going through the motions from start to finish. The Furious Five are wasted almost entirely, with only Angelina Jolie as Tigress receiving any notable role. What's the point of having Jackie Chan and Lucy Liu back again to voice characters, only to give them merely a handful of forgettable lines throughout?

The biggest flaw, however, is in the vast reduction of Hoffman's role as Shifu. Hoffman's participation can pretty much be considered a cameo here. One of the key reasons for the first film's success was the vocal performance of Hoffman and his brilliant interplay with Black. His absence from a huge portion of the sequel removes that element without successfully replacing it, and the film really suffers from the loss of Shifu as a character and Hoffman as a vocal presence.

All of this means Kung Fu Panda 2 never fulfils the potential it holds. The most disappointing fact of all is it's clear from what is here that the potential held was huge. It's not a bad film by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a prime example of a film that should have been a champion quickly becoming an also-ran through a few key mistakes. Taking into account the cinematic masterpieces being produces by Pixar, now is the time that DreamWorks simply have to take their animated output to the next level not only in animation but in every other way too if they want to be considered contenders to Pixar's throne. We've yet to see DreamWorks' answer to a Toy Story 3 or a WALL-E, and, unfortunately, Kung Fu Panda 2 doesn't bring them any closer to achieving it.

6/10