Film Review | Bad Teacher (2011)

Bad Teacher, a bit like Horrible Bosses, is one of those "Ronseal" films (in that it does exactly what it says on the tin) that should just fall into place as a relatively decent piece of throwaway entertainment. But whilst Horrible Bosses is a prime example of how not to get it right, Bad Teacher, although far from perfect, manages it somewhat better.

Cameron Diaz plays Elizabeth Halsey, the titular teacher who is forced to return to her job at a middle school after being dumped by her wealthy fiancé. She soon sets her sights on supply teacher Scott Delacorte (Justin Timberlake) as well as doing anything she can get away with to save money for the breast enhancement surgery she is longing for.

If you're looking for a moralistic tale, Bad Teacher isn't it. This is not a film where everyone who deserves it gets their comeuppance (although some do), nor is it a film that pulls any punches in terms of taste. It probably gets away with this about as often as it goes too far, resulting in a patchy mix that makes you laugh one minute and cringe the next.

Diaz seems to ease into the role as the film wears on, starting off somewhat unconvincingly but providing some genuine laughs once she hits her stride. Timberlake is fine in an unchallenging role, and Jason Segel as P.E. teacher Russell Gettis is likeable enough whilst providing a few entertaining moments throughout. Arguably the strongest performance here comes from Lucy Punch as painfully chirpy and enthusiastic teacher Amy Squirrel, who provides a terrific nemesis for Diaz's Elizabeth.

The film doesn't concern itself with much of a plot, instead moving relatively disparately from one set of circumstances to the next. This allows for some humorous scenarios and a handful of genuinely funny scenes in isolation, but means the film as a whole feels lacking in structure. Bad Teacher ultimately ends up as a hit-and-miss piece of bubblegum cinema that's enjoyable enough but never attempts to deliver anything memorable or of substance. Which is probably exactly what the filmmaker's were aiming for.

5/10

Film Review | Men In Black 3 (2012)

I'm a big fan of Men In Black, and whilst it's not a patch on the original, I've never hated Men In Black 2 quite as much as most others seemed to. It was a sequel with some very good ideas (and a few incredibly bad ones - I'm looking at you here Frank The Pug), but nothing to tie them together leaving the whole thing lacking focus, direction or care. Essentially there was no real reason for Men In Black 2 to be made other than to make money off the success of the first film, and it really showed through the finished product. Ten years on, and everyone involved in the franchise had nothing to lose in making Men In Black 3. They weren't capitalising on the success of a recent franchise, nor were they committed to complete a trilogy story arc. Men In Black 3 had a new freedom to be whatever film it wanted to be within an established universe. Just as the lack of care was evident throughout Men In Black 2, so the intention, craft and heart involved in making Men In Black 3 is equally as clear.

Men In Black 3 sees alien criminal Boris The Animal (Jermaine Clement) escape from a prison on the Moon to exact revenge on the man who put him there, Agent K (Tommy Lee Jones). Boris' plan involves travelling back through time to murder K before he can imprison him, which leads to K's partner J (Will Smith) following him through time to 1969 in order to stop Boris and prevent the catastrophic effects K's death in the past will have on the present.

From the start, the film knows how to play to its strengths, not least the cast. There is of course the welcome return of the pairing of Smith and Jones, falling back into their slick and entertaining double act as soon as they appear on screen. However, the opportunity for banter between the two is reduced significantly from the first two films with Jones' reduced screen time, an unfortunate but unavoidable side effect of the nature of the plot. Thankfully it also leads to the strongest piece of new casting in the film, namely Josh Brolin as the younger version of K that J teams up with in 1969. Brolin's performance is a hybrid of a classic stereotypical agency stiff and an impressively accurate Tommy Lee Jones impersonation, resulting in a strong and charismatic turn from the actor. The partnership of Smith and Brolin never reaches the heights of Smith and Jones, but the two have palpable chemistry and prove an enjoyable pairing throughout.

There is strength in the cast elsewhere, with Clement putting in an impressive performance under a huge amount of prosthetics and CGI as villain Boris; he never quite reaches the exquisite creepiness of Vincent D'Onofrio's Edgar from the first film, but Boris poses a palpable threat whilst being more than suitably repulsive. Emma Watson is fine as Agent O, replacing Rip Torn's Agent Z from the first two films as Head of MIB, but is given frustratingly little to do. Michael Stuhlbarg as alien Griffin also does well, bringing an ethereal quality to the character whilst never becoming annoying.

There are some sound action sequences throughout, although all but the finale feel a little brief and unspectacular leaving you wanting something more. However, it's clear from the start that Men In Black 3 isn't interested in rehashing the action-based ideas from the first two films; this is a film primarily concerned with emotion. The true payoff doesn't come until very late on in proceedings, but when it does it's easily one of the most touching moments to come out of a sci-fi film in recent years.

Whilst it never manages to reach the heights of the original, Men In Black 3 is consistently superior to the first sequel to the point that comparison isn't even worthwhile. It's a film that stands as an enjoyable and well-made blockbuster on its own, whilst at the same time doing things with the franchise that very few people ever expected it to, not least adding a welcome and heartwarming new dimension to the well-established duo of Agents J and K.

7/10

Film Review | Horrible Bosses (2011)

Horrible Bosses should more accurately be renamed "Horrible Bosses And Their Equally Horrible Employees". In fact, if we're going for a new title, it'd be much more effective to reduce the amount of words by half and call the film what it actually is: horrible.

Horrible Bosses follows the lives of Nick (Jason Bateman), Dale (Charlie Day) and Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) who all despise their bosses for different reasons. When conversation turns to whether or not they would kill their bosses if they could do it without any ramifications, the subject quickly transforms from hypothesis to a real life murder plan.

The sole redeeming feature of Horrible Bosses is the bosses themselves, with three game and talented actors in the roles. I'm not a big fan of Kevin Spacey, who plays Nick's boss David Harken, but he can turn out an entertaining performance as a psychotic business executive in his sleep - Spacey isn't challenged throughout, but his performance is satisfactorily enjoyable nonetheless. Colin Farrell, playing Kurt's boss Bobby Pellitt, shows a slick comedic streak not seen often enough with a turn rivalling Tom Cruise's Les Grossman from Tropic Thunder in both energy and prosthetics. It's a shame that Farrell is given far too little to do, leaving his character feeling disappointingly underdeveloped. Least successful of the three is Dr. Julia Harris, Dale's boss played by Jennifer Aniston, not due to Aniston's performance - which again shows a comedic talent the actress should employ much more often than the bland rom-com schtick she usually trots out - but thanks simply to some of the truly awful scenes the character is placed in.

Which brings us to the three employees, who form the rancid foundation upon which the film's ideas are woefully constructed. We are first introduced to Nick, who tells us that his path to success is through, and I quote, "taking shit" from other people. Nick is set up as a spineless, whining doormat of a man, and this continues throughout the film. Bateman is an actor whose work I've enjoyed in the past, but here he's consistently annoying. Nick, however, is the most likeable of the central trio.

Kurt is initially introduced as a relatable everyman, but this is quickly dissipated through the character's arrogance and misogyny which gets worse as the film wears on. We are led to believe that Kurt was initially in line to take over the reins of his company as a hardworking and well-liked senior employee. By the end of the film, you'll feel sorry for anyone who has to work with him. The fact that Kurt also seems unable to stop himself from sleeping with anything in a skirt also severely undermines one of the major reasons Dale has a problem with Julia: sexual harassment. At best, this can be chalked up to sloppy writing; at worst, it makes the film distastefully sexist.

Speaking of Dale, he is by far the most irritating of the three. Dale tells us through voiceover at the start of the film that all he's wanted to be since he was a boy is a husband, something entirely at odds with the character we see throughout the vast majority of the film: a grating man-child who doesn't even mention his wife past the first act. Charlie Day is not an actor I've seen a lot of, but based on his performance here I'll do my best to avoid anything involving him in the future.

With a group of lead characters as vile as these, Horrible Bosses limps on from the very start without much hope. The plot is muddled, with two of the bosses shoved to the sidelines for the second half of proceedings for no reason other than the script's inability to support all the characters introduced. Whilst the humour is clearly intended to be black, the film wholly fails to satirise anything and, whilst it raised a smile here and there, I failed to laugh at any point. In the end, Horrible Bosses scores a point each for the performances from Spacey, Farrell and Aniston, but other than that there is very little here to like.

3/10

Film Review | Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows (2011)

In 2009's Sherlock Holmes, Guy Ritchie delivered a flawed but enjoyable new take on one of British literature's most loved characters. Whilst the film was far from perfect, it felt like a solid platform upon which to launch future installments in a new franchise where the faults could be remedied and the successful elements - not least the central performance from Robert Downey Jr. - could be capitalised upon. Unfortunately, Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows almost comprehensively fails to do that.

The film catches up with Holmes (Downey Jr.) investigating links between a series of crimes across Europe and Professor James Moriarty (Jared Harris) following the tip he received from Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) at the end of the first film. Watson (Jude Law) meanwhile is preparing to marry his fiancée Mary (Kelly Reilly), but soon becomes embroiled in Holmes and Moriarty's game of cat and mouse.

Downey Jr. as Holmes again delivers the strongest performance here, slipping comfortably back into the mannerisms and personality he successfully established in Sherlock Holmes. It's unfortunate that Holmes this time is regularly written as self-parodical of the character Downey Jr. created, adopting a series of ridiculous and entirely unconvincing disguises throughout the film and transforming the character from manic genius to harebrained clown. Law too falls back into the character of Watson comfortably, but suffers from sharing less screen time with Holmes than in the first film and feeling like a half-hearted straight man to Holmes' fool when he does.

Elsewhere, the casting is a mixed bag. The biggest improvement from the first film is the reduction of McAdams' role as Irene Adler to not much more than a cameo. Noomi Rapace replaces McAdams as the film's main female character, and is much stronger than her predecessor at the points when she is given something to do. Jared Harris as Moriarty does well enough, but feels somewhat forgettable considering he is playing Holmes' archenemy. Stephen Fry as Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock's older brother, is sure to raise a smile in his first scene despite the fact that he is essentially playing the character as himself; the appeal is short-lived however as it's clear the plot has nothing of worth for Fry's character to do, epitomised in a scene between Mycroft and Mary which Fry inexplicably delivers naked. Pointless and unfunny.

The action scenes that irked in the first film are more overblown here to the point of overindulgence. Each sequence essentially comes across as an excuse for Ritchie to include bigger and more powerful guns than were seen in the last point of action. The excessive use of slow motion, particularly in one scene towards the end of the second act, is also distracting and just serves to make the film come across as lacking in craft or depth.

Whilst the story here is arguably stronger than that seen in the first film, the cinematic execution of A Game Of Shadows makes it considerably less enjoyable than Sherlock Holmes. Despite setting up several elements with which he could run and make a sequel superior to the original, Ritchie instead squanders most of the potential held and creates a film which is sometimes no better than the first, but more often inferior. The biggest failing of A Game Of Shadows, however, is that it manages to take a literary character known for his ingenious intellect and churn out a film which regularly feels really quite brainless.

4/10

Film Review | Sherlock Holmes (2009)

The first ten years of the 21st Century will almost certainly be seen in cinema as the decade of the reboot. I've written at length about the importance of hitting the reset button for both the Batman and James Bond franchises, but Arthur Conan Doyle's consulting detective was a less obvious and, perhaps, less urgent candidate for rebooting. Add in the fact that the man behind the reboot is Guy Ritchie, a director known for British gangster flicks rather than adaptations of Victorian literature, and all of a sudden 2009's Sherlock Holmes becomes a more intriguing and unpredictable creature.

Ritchie's film sees the titular detective (Robert Downey Jr.) and his friend and partner Dr. John Watson (Jude Law) assist the police in arresting Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong) for a series of murders. However, when Blackwood appears to have risen from the grave after being hanged for his crimes, Holmes and Watson's  investigations take a more sinister and supernatural turn.

It's clear from the very start that Ritchie's vision for his version of Conan Doyle's detective is quite far removed from the deerstalker wearing gent of past incarnations. Downey Jr. makes his Holmes an alluring and unconventional take on the character; whilst it never feels as though he quite fits the role as perfectly as he does Tony Stark in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, his performance in the role is compelling and strong throughout. Law also does well as Watson, again going against the stereotypical depiction of the character and instead playing things much closer to Conan Doyle's source material, focusing on Watson's status as a war veteran to generate the character's temperament and physicality. Whilst his turn is pleasing, Law is most entertaining when sharing the screen with Downey Jr., which thankfully for him takes in the vast majority of his scenes.

Elsewhere the casting is less successful. Rachel McAdams as Holmes' shady love interest Irene Adler never convinces, having neither the chemistry with Downey Jr. nor the presence on screen to make her character entertaining, mysterious or, at some points, necessary. Mark Strong is fine, but never receives enough screen time to make Lord Blackwood anything more than a scowling villain. Eddie Marsan also does well as Inspector Lestrade, but again the character just receives too little development to give the actor a chance to genuinely impress.

The film's plot, not taken directly from any of Conan Doyle's stories but instead inspired by elements from several of his works, engages well enough throughout, but suffers from a final act that can't quite live up to the mystery generated before it and a climax that underwhelms. The action elements throughout the film also jar too much with the detective story into which they have been placed. An underground bareknuckle fight Holmes takes part in early on in the film works well, revealing elements of the detective's character cleverly and enjoyably. Other sequences that see Holmes and Watson brawling with various baddies through Victorian London are uninspired, adding nothing to the story and feeling as though they are only there because director Ritchie doesn't know how else to link his film together.

Sherlock Holmes ends up, at least in part, as a wasted opportunity. There are several elements here that reboot the character and universe of Holmes incredibly well, led by a robust and compelling performance from Downey Jr. But there are also too many areas in which the film falls short or misfires to judge it as a true success. What we're left with is a good film that entertains well enough, but also feels as though it doesn't do enough with the ideas it has and the rich literary source material from which it takes inspiration.  But there's enough here to launch the franchise, with future installments having the potential to remedy the less successful elements and create something genuinely pleasing.

6/10

Film Review | Miracle On 34th Street (1994)

A confession to open this review: at the time of writing, I've never seen the 1947 original version of Miracle On 34th Street. Whilst it therefore may be considered cinematic sacrilege to have seen the John Hughes produced 1994 remake several times, it does mean that I can consider the modern version on its own merits without making constant comparisons to the much-loved black-and-white classic.

Richard Attenborough stars as Kris Kringle, playing Santa Claus at New York department store Cole's which is relying on a successful Christmas season to fend off its recent financial difficulties. Kringle purports to be the real Santa and, whilst initially setting about to convince the non-believing Susan Walker (Mara Wilson) and her mother Dorey (Elizabeth Perkins), ends up in court arguing not only for his sanity but also over whether Santa Claus exists at all.

Miracle On 34th Street may not be directed by Hughes, but as producer and co-writer here his fingerprints are all over it. Hughes knows people and seemingly effortlessly creates incredibly human characters often in larger-than-life situations. Kris Kringle is the epitome of this, gleaming throughout with charm and warmth which is brought to life through a fantastically committed and wondrously understated performance from Attenborough. The veteran actor strikes the perfect balance between the harmlessly loopy and endearingly wise and caring elements of Kris' character; many cite Edmund Gwenn from the 1947 version of this film as the greatest big screen Santa of all time (indeed, Gwenn is the only actor ever to win an Oscar for a portrayal of Santa Claus), but to my mind Attenborough has to be considered as one of the all-time greats as well.

Attenborough is supported ably by Wilson and Perkins as the charming, yet damaged, mother and daughter pairing, as well as Dylan McDermott as Bryan, Dorey's patient and adoring boyfriend and later Kris' lawyer. The casting and performances fit brilliantly into the curiously timeless world which Hughes and director Les Mayfield create. Miracle's New York City is enchantingly caught between the modern day and a nostalgic old-fashioned version of the city (perhaps a throwback to the time in which the original film was set and released), giving the film a feeling of quality and a highly polished finish.

The story is one that can be watched and rewatched without becoming tiresome, putting a unique spin on Christmas traditions and creating arguably one of the most magical of all Christmas films without overtly putting the magic on camera. There are no elves or flying sleighs in Miracle: it's magic is much more subtle, and all the more heartwarming for it.

Occasionally the film becomes too schmaltzy for its own good - a montage depicting a date between Bryan and Dorey, set to a vomit-inducing Kenny G version of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas", is potentially one of the cheesiest sequences ever committed to film - and things occasionally feel a little too gentle, even for a family film. But the pervading Christmas spirit easily wins through, making Miracle On 34th Street a well made and thoroughly enjoyable modern Christmas classic.

8/10

Film Review | Arthur Christmas (2011)

With a title based around such a tenuous pun, Arthur Christmas ("Arthur" sounds a bit like "Father", geddit?) was a film I was prepared to watch and then forget, another entry into the middle-of-the-road Christmas cinematic canon. Thankfully, setting my expectations at such an average level meant that Arthur Christmas ended up as something of a pleasant surprise.

The film follows Arthur (James McAvoy), the youngest son of Santa Claus (Jim Broadbent) who is well-meaning but clumsy and kept out of the way as much as possible, especially by his older brother Steve (Hugh Laurie). When one gift is left behind on Christmas Eve, Arthur and his grandfather Grandsanta (Bill Nighy) to find a way to make sure it's delivered before Christmas morning.

Plot-wise, Arthur Christmas isn't anything particularly special. The main story is entertaining but provides very few twists or developments that will surprise; once Arthur and Grandsanta set their plan in motion to deliver the missed present, it's pretty obvious how things will conclude. The family dispute subplot is somewhat more original, but also reaches the most predictable conclusion that you'll have seen coming from somewhere during the film's first act.

Thankfully, there's quite a lot elsewhere to prop up Arthur Christmas's by-the-numbers plotting. The voice cast is a veritable "who's who" of British talent, with each imbuing his or her character with charm and humour. Whilst the script may not crackle with comedy the same way that Aardman Animation's traditional stop-motion efforts do, the jokes here hit the mark far more often than they miss. The animation itself is also impressive - not quite Pixar standards, but with some beautifully realised scenes throughout, as well as some finely constructed action sequences. All of this lends the "modern versus traditional" message and the inventive way it's put across throughout the film tangible credibility, as well as making the film enjoyable even at points when the script is at its least focused or inspired.

Arthur Christmas ends up as a very entertaining Christmas tale. What it lacks in depth or originality in its story, it more than makes up for in the talent on show through both the casting and the animation. It's a new Christmas film with both genuine heart and humour - something that seems to be true less and less often in recent years.

7/10