THE LONE RANGER

The Pirates of the Caribbean famously started out as a Disney theme park attraction and went on to gross significant amounts of money for the producers (and four sequels).  It should come as little surprise then that director Gore Vorbinski would want to try the same and recapture the spark that made the original movie so enjoyable.    His source this time is not a theme park attraction but a hero who first originated on radio before making the leap to television.  This, it might be thought is firmer footing for a summer blockbuster than an amusement park attraction populated by crumbling animatronic dummies ....you would think that anyway.

If you’re wondering why I started by mentioning the Piratesmovies it’s because this movie is trying its hardest to be them. It’s not just a case of being from the same adventure comedy genre but the entire feel of the film is like Vorbisnski shouting "hey remember that movie with pirates? You liked that?  Right, well cowboys are kinda like pirates ..right?  Let’s do this."The problem is that the  Lone Ranger on its best day just can't fill its more famous (and I'm sure more financially lucrative ) predecessor’s pirates boots.

This is not to say, of course,that there are not enjoyable things in the film. The script is at its best when it’s conveying humorous dialogue - much of the married couple-like bickering between the Ranger and Tonto is highly enjoyable.        A lot of the action scenes are quite good at keeping up the adventurous tone of the movie but the problem lies with the attempts to be serious - which sadly is about 60% of the time.  Worse, still, in an bizarre and misguided attempt to be gritty,dark and gruesome, events and descriptions are brought into the film which feel  out-of-place for a family adventure film.   A villain who cuts out and eats victims’ hearts (never on screen but we hear it at one point) and natives being gunned down by machine guns just don't really seem to fit into what the  picture is trying to be.  Why the writers felt these things were needed are a bit difficult to fathom as their absence would not take anything away from the film  - the villains would be no less evil by their other actions.

This ‘tone’ problem leaves the film feeling very uneven and uncomfortable at times.  A far more overriding problem is our main protagonist, Arnie Hammer, does his best but there’s no getting around the fact that our main hero is rather boring as a character having only cliched motivations and talking mainly in stock heroic dialogue.

Johnny Depp’s Tonto is a far more interesting character yet is insufficiently involved to carry the film on his own.  Some have criticised casting Depp as the heroic native American although he does claim some Comanche ancestry.  It is interesting that they chose to have Tonto wear white facepaint for the duration of the film,one can't help but wonder if that is to spare another kind of make-up job.  Again his dialogue contributes towards the cringe factor. 

FINAL VERDICT 4/10 Still entertaining and not without its charms but it hadthe potential to be so much more,a lack of effort on the part of the makers leaves it dead in the dust.

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Unknown 16:15  No comment

ALAN PARTRIDGE ALPHA PAPA

The leap from novel to screen is a common route for film projects to take, but not so the jump from the small screen to the big screen.  Success stories include Police Squad (Naked Gun), The Inbetweeners and In The Loop (The Thick of It).  Less successful would be any British tv sitcom from the 70s.  The risks of getting involved with an established story, characters and most terrifying of all to any prospective producer or director – the loyal fanbase – are considerable.

On paper a film adaptation of Alan Partridge is a risky proposition because the tv series has been finished for quite some time so it’s not exactly fresh in the collective memory.  That series also relied on a very specific brand of humour, we  were never encouraged to empathise with the protagonist (Steve Coogan), quite the opposite, we were supposed to laugh at how pathetic and low he could sink . A big screen outing would seem to be a risky proposition for a character who would seem, on the surface, to be ill-suited to the medium.

It says much for the script work and acting in this endeavour that this film not only succeeds but exceeds all expectations.  Right from the opening credits we know the film will pull no punches as Partridge’s on air radio assistant makes a badly thought-out joke involving Muslims and a crude sex reference.  A lesser film would leave the laugh there but Alpha Papa achieves further laughs by Alan's horrified reaction and his verbal tap dancing to cover the gaffe.  This is the awkward, embarrassed humour of the film translating perfectly the spirit of the original programme  onto the big screen. This is not to say that there are not some changes, the character has some of his nastier qualities toned down (possibly to try to reach a new audience who might not be used to just how callous he could be) but the same desperate energy is very much in evidence.

Towards the end, as with many comedies,things begin to sag a bit.  Having put the characters in a certain situation the task of keeping the laughs going whilst tying up the plot causes a few misfires.  The relatively simple plot does not require much wrapping up and the end does feel a bit drawn out for the sake of squeezing out a few more laughs.  Some character plots don’t feel as resolved as they could be and a side-effect of having an anti-hero as a protagonist seems to get ignored completely. 

Very well written dialogue and set pieces are more than enough to carry the film through these failings and one joke aside (which feels like a repeat of an earlier one), the originality of the situations they place Partridge in make for some of the howlingly-funny and toe-curlingly, cringe-worthy laughs ever recorded on screen.

Final Verdict8/10 Truly a surprise,truly hilarious

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Unknown 04:27  1 comment

SHERLOCK HOLMES

With the release of a promo for the new Sherlock Holmes television series airing on BBC, I thought it might be fun to revisit the series 2 finale of "The Reichenbach Fall" episode which ended with our hero (Benedict  Cumberbatch)  plunging to his ‘death’ from the top of a high building.  The closing scene had  Dr. Watson (Martin Freeman) in mourning  at Sherlock’s grave – unaware that he was being watched by none other than Sherlock himself.

So for those of you who watched the episode just how did Sherlock survive jumping  off a building  (only confirmation of his death would ensure some of his friends were not killed by assassins in the employ of Moriarty), and landing with an almighty thud on the pavement below?

You might remember that Dr. Watson, who saw Sherlock jump was then knocked over by a cyclist as he moved towards the building.  He was dazed and confused when he arrived at Sherlock’s lifeless and bloody body.

My own theory is that the appearance of Derren Brown in the next series might be extremely significant.  Could he have been involved in aiding Sherlock who might have foreseen Moriarty’s plan? 

I’d like to hear your theories on how he survived.  Please post your comments below.

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Unknown 04:23  1 comment

THE CONJURING

Director: James Wan (Saw,  Insidious )

A disclaimer.  This film purports to be based on true events.  My purpose is to look at the film on its own merits and, as such, I’ll not be touching on the truth of the story or the authenticity of the events it purports to show.

There is something deep in the human spirit that wants to be scared.  It may be a remnant from our ancestors who dealt with danger constantly but which means little to us in our (relatively) safe urban surroundings.  Whatever the reason, cinema-goers continue to flock to films expecting to be terrified whilst watching the movie through our face-covered hands.  The problem is that we’re becoming used to many of the tricks and techniques used by film-makers to scare us (which makes us empathise with the problems faced by the mangers in the original Monsters Inc movie).

The Conjuring does not invent anything new to get this sort of reaction from its audience but what it does do is to use the tools at its disposal in an artful and inventive way.  This, to the film’s further credit, is not accomplished with cgi trickery or an over-reliance on ‘jump’ scares (ega character turns around find themselves face-to-face with a demon).  Instead the director builds a good atmosphere by turning mundane objects like a music box or the sounds of hands clapping into a terrifying spectral phenomena.  Even when it does fall-back on the jump-scare it is skilfully achieved by restricting how many of these take place and the simple make-up and prosthetics achieve their desired effects.

The film’s flaws can mainly be found in the script, which, whilst this is extremely well-written with regards to intimate character interaction – this is particularly true with the paranormal investigators Ed and Loraine  Warren. However, it does falter a little when it comes to the excessive jargon the two speak in for much of the rest of the film . Quite often the family will be nodding their heads when these two lapse into paranormal mumbo-jumbo speak and we’re meant to believe that they understand what they’re saying and believe them totally.  What’s worse is that  a lot of this information is important to the plot and therefore starts to look suspiciously like’deus ex machina’ (information the characters know for no other reason to move the plot along). Some of the dialogue that is supposed to be deadly serious is so can be unintentionally laughable - "she climbed the tree, declared her love for Satan and then hung herself".   Maybe a Valentine’s card to Satan would have been much easier.

The climax of the film, sadly, slips back into the more clichéd exorcism images we have come to expect from this genre. For a film that has shown such restraint it is disappointing indeed when the over-the-top shouting and screaming takes over to remind us how dangerous the demons are.

The director, I feel, does not trust his actors enough to convey the fear and terror via their own talent, as they have done for much of the film, rather than rely on the usual cheap tricks. It’s certainly not a boring finale,our interest and investment in the characters ensure that we still remain gripped (again though this is down to the actors).  One can't help but think that Wan became nervous about showing enough of his spectral antagonist,forgetting perhaps that what you don't see can often be more terrifying than any visual horror. Nonetheless this minor misstep is thankfully not enough to derail the movie as a whole.

FINAL VERDICT -  8/10 extremely well crafted  in executing its  goal.

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Unknown 06:21  No comment