Safety Last!

Anyone who knows me or has regularly perused my blog will be well aware that I’m a huge fan of the silent comedy from the 1910s to 1930s. Of course this isn’t entirely true though. My love and knowledge only extends as far as the two behemoths of the era, to Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Aside from the occasional foray into the likes of Laurel and Hardy and non-Chaplin Keystone, my understanding is limited. For a long time I’ve wanted to get a hold of some of the films of Harold Lloyd, the man who probably came closest to Chaplin and Keaton both then and now. Unfortunately, unlike my two comedy heroes, his oeuvre is harder to come by and much more expensive. I’ve started then with what is in my opinion his best known work; Safety Last! A film famous for its iconic still of Lloyd hanging from a clock face several stories up a skyscraper, I thought I’d start with the obvious and work my way back.

The movie opens very strongly with a set up that seems to suggest that the lead character, named Harold Lloyd, is behind bars and being visited by his sweetheart and a priest. In the background, a hangman’s noose looms. As the camera zooms out though, we learn that he’s merely behind a fence and is in fact awaiting the arrival of a train that will take him to the big city in search of his fortune. Lloyd promises to make good within the year in order that he and his girl (Mildred Davis) can marry. The establishing scene expertly sets up the next sixty-five minutes by introducing us to the characters and their motivations as well as giving us a great sight gag. From then on, the film goes from strength to strength.

Her

Spike Jonze’s Her is a sweet, poignant and yet gently chilling romantic comedy about a man who falls in love with his computer’s operating system. Nominated for five Oscars, including Best Picture, it’s been met with critical acclaim. It features a fascinating conceit which is deeply explored and contains some beautiful set and costume design as well as some exceptional performances. Why is it then that I found it as cold as a hibernating laptop?

It’s 2025 and Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) is a letter writer in Los Angeles. His marriage has failed and he’s delaying the signing of his divorce papers, holding out for a second chance which he knows is never going to come. Desperately lonely, he’s become a slight recluse, distancing himself from friends while maintaining a false sunny disposition in their company. One day Theodore sports a newly released operating system (OS) in a mall, one which promises to learn and adapt, whose artificial intelligence is designed to be more than a computer but to be a friend. Samantha (Scarlett Johansson) as the OS calls herself, becomes Theodore’ friend and soon, his lover. 

Some Like It Hot

A Hollywood remake of the 1935 French movie Fanfare d'Amour, Some Like It Hot is widely regarded as amongst the funniest and most cherished films in the history of cinema. Written, Produced and Directed by one of cinema’s finest, Billy Wilder, it stars Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon as destitute musicians, eking out a living in prohibition era Chicago. Having accidentally witnessed the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, the two men go on the lamb and hop on a train to Florida. In order to go unnoticed by the Mob they disguise themselves as women and join an all female band heading to Miami. Amongst the band members is Sugar (Marilyn Monroe) who both men (obviously) fall for.

I’ve wanted to see Some Like It Hot for a long time and having finally got around to it last night, I can report that I wasn’t disappointed. Wilder and I.A.L. Diamond’s script is rich, saucy and hilarious while full of the sort of bawdy double entendre that would have been impossible to get passed censors in the years before. In fact, along with the likes of Hitchcock’s Psycho and Wilder’s own The Apartment, it was just this sort of movie which saw to the decline and eventually dismemberment of the dreaded Hays/Breen Code that had constricted Hollywood since the early 1930s.

Silver Linings Playbook

Patrick (Bradley Cooper), recently diagnosed with bi-polar is released from a psychiatric hospital eight months after nearly beating a man to death for sleeping with his wife. He arrives home to find that his superstitious father (Robert De Niro) has lost his job and is making money as a bookmaker on American Football games. Patrick is desperate to reconnect with his wife despite their problems and a restraining order and soon falls in with a friend of a friend called Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence) who promises to get a letter to Patrick’s wife in exchange for help in a dance competition.

I had no interest in seeing Silver Linings Playbook, especially after my girlfriend saw it and gave a one word review of “meh-umm-yeah”. A friend of mine though said it was excellent and it’s popping up in awards nominations and best of lists so I thought I should check it out. If the film gets anywhere near any major awards for anything other than acting, I will be shocked. The film is average at best but flourishes due to some great acting performances which start at the leads and extend right down to the secondary and tertiary characters.

Punch Drunk Love

Paul Thomas Anderson’s third film and his shortest by some mark is Punch Drunk Love, a fantastically extrovert romantic comedy which combines shades of Coen-esque humour and dare I say Lynch-ian motifs of magical realism and dual personality. The film is unlike any romantic comedy I’ve seen before and personally I prefer it to the likes of There Will be Blood and The Master for which the Director is better known.

Although the plot is often a bit thin and sometimes incidental it concerns a lonely and occasionally awkward man called Barry (Adam Sandler) who owns a small business that sells novelty toilet plungers. Barry has the misfortune of having seven sisters, a situation which emasculates him and causes him no end of hassle and grief. One day while at work Barry witnesses a horrific car accident and suddenly ends up with a harmonium. That same day he also meets a pretty girl called Lena (Emily Watson). Sometime later, while lonely, Barry calls a premium rate sex line, a move which brings about a lot more pain and hassle than even seven sisters can muster.

Beautiful Lies

"I don't want to love someone else. Understand? I just want to be sad"

Known in some countries by the titles Full Treatment or De vrais mensonges, Beautiful Lies is a French romantic comedy starring Audrey Tautou. Emilie (Tautou) is the co-owner of a new Salon in the beautiful seaside town of Sète. She receives an anonymous love letter which is actually from the Salon maintenance man Jean (Sami Bouajila). Jean is head over heels in love with Emilie but besides the anonymous letter hasn’t let his feelings be known to anyone. Emilie briefly reads the letter but throws it away then meets her mother Maddy (Nathalie Baye). Maddy has lost her spark and is depressed about her failed marriage. Emilie decides that to cheer her mother up she will take the love letter from the bin, type it up and post it to her mother’s address. This brings Maddy back to life and she begins her quest to discover its sender. What follows is a series of confused misunderstandings as the man ends up caught in a love triangle with mother and daughter.

Beautiful Lies is a frothy and often very funny romantic comedy which features some great performances from the principle cast.

The Five Year Engagement

"You ate the old doughnut"

Tom (Jason Segel) is a sous chef at a top end San Francisco restaurant but is forced to move to the mid west when his fiancée Violet (Emily Blunt) gets a post graduate position at the University of Michigan. This occurs shortly after the couple’s engagement and they decide to put their wedding on hold for a couple of years until they return to the West Coast. Their relationship is strained though when Tom fails to fit in or find a satisfying job while Violet’s career takes off and leaves Tom alone to ponder the career he left in San Francisco.

As soon as the film opens you are able to chart its plot pretty much to a tee but the journey to the finale is both funny and intelligent. The film is helped in no small way by two delightful characters played by two very watchable actors, Blunt and Segel. They appear to have great chemistry and Blunt in particular comes out of her shell and puts her comedic chops to great use.

Friends with Kids

Six New York thirty-somethings see their lives change over the course of several years as children come into their lives. Alex and Leslie (Chris O’Dowd and Maya Rudolph) are a married couple with two children, struggling to keep their heads above water. Ben and Missy (Jon Hamm and Kristen Wiig) are a sexually charged couple who find things difficult once a baby arrives while Jason and Julie (Adam Scott and Jennifer Westfeldt) are best friends who know each other inside out. Fearing that they are getting old and seeing how difficult managing a marriage and child can be, they decide to have a child as friends with no emotional attachment. Both are free to carry on with their separate love lives after the child’s birth and agree to joint custody of the baby.

There have been comparisons to last years smash hit Bridesmaids but that is purely down to casting. This is a completely different film. While Wiig, O’Dowd, Rudolph and Hamm all starred in Wiig’s massively successful comedy, Friends with Kids reminded me more of a Woody Allen film, only without the wit or humour.

The Dictator

Admiral General Aladeen (Sasha Baron Cohen) is the dictator of the fictitious North African Republic of Wadiya. After his attempts to build nuclear weapons are announced he is summoned to the UN to explain his and his country’s plans. While in New York he is betrayed and an attempt is made on his life. After escaping he discovers that he has been replaced with a double and finds himself working in a vegan, shared earth coop where he becomes friends with Zoey (Anna Farris). Aladeen uses the coop to try to regain his identity and his grip on power in Wadiya.

For his 4^th feature, Baron Cohen has moved away from the mocumentary style for which he has become synonymous and The Dictator is mostly played as a straight forward comedy feature. The character of Aladeen is based on a hodgepodge of various real life dictators and draws from the West’s perceptions of them and their countries. The result is that Aladeen is a racist, sexist, cartoon who while being occasionally funny, generally fails to impress. The humour of the film on the whole failed to resonate with me and the majority of the audience I saw it with, indeed a man on the row in front of me walked out about an hour in having not laughed once.

Delicacy

Nathalie (Audrey Tautou) is left devastated after the death of her new husband Francois (Pio Marmai) and spends the next three years mourning him, in a daze, floating through life. One day unexpectedly she kisses a new colleague of hers, Markus (Francois Damiens), an unattractive, balding Swede in an act that leaves him perplexed and creates tensions at work.

The first half of this film was incredibly dull and bland. I was beginning to regret seeing it until the introduction of Damiens as Markus. He bought a spark to the film and took it from a magnolia tragedy to a sweet and funny romantic comedy. Up until this point it felt like the film was going nowhere. Nathalie had been hit on by her boss in a scene which bought nothing to the film; she had somehow gone from selling programmes at the theatre to having her own office and running some sort of case (which was never explained). Then Damiens arrived and lit up the screen. His character was bumbling and nervous but sweet and kind and it is clear why Nathalie is drawn to him. Their relationship creates many funny scenes as well as some that verge on melancholia.

Tautou is fine as Nathalie but she is hardly stretched. She has to play a pretty young widow who looks glum, something her face seems to do naturally. The supporting cast are all fine too and include a Christina Hendricks lookalike(Audrey Fleurot) who plays a secretary, wears the same outfits as ‘Joan’ from Mad Men and even has the same pen around her neck! The star of the show though is Francois Damiens who steals the film. He plays the sort of character that you would love to be friends with and you know would always look out for you. He also gives the ordinary man hope by getting together with Audrey Tautou. He also provides most of the film’s comic relief.

One of the problems with the film is that it suffers with the same musical trouble as Little White Lies. Obviously film makers choose music that conveys a certain mood but here as in the aforementioned film, it is so palpable it verges on being ridiculous. I also have a problem with the dull first act but overall this is a throwaway romantic comedy which features strong central performances and a message that it doesn’t matter how someone looks but what matters is what sort of person you are.

7/10

Wall-E

Pixar’s 2008 Wall-E is set in the distant future; at a time when the human race has left Earth due to an unmanageable build up of waste. While humanity has grown fat and lazy aboard giant space craft the last remaining Wall-E robot is busy on Earth trying to clean up the mess. Wall-E is dedicated but naïve. He takes pride in his work but also has a collection of interesting objects and a passion for the 1969 film Hello Dolly! That film makes him long for company. That company arrives unexpectedly one day in the form of EVE. EVE is a robot sent to earth to search for plant life, something that Wall-E has recently found on the otherwise desolate planet. Wall-E falls instantly in love with EVE and follows her into deep space in an adventure which will impact both them and the remainder of the human race.

I’ll say straight away that I love this film. It is probably my favourite Pixar film which puts it pretty high up my all time list. The animation is extraordinary. In my opinion it is up there with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs for the best looking computer animated film ever. The thing that stands out most is the way the film uses focus to such great effect. Backgrounds have the look of being in the background and it gives the film great depth of field. The focus also shifts from the foreground to background to give the film an incredibly realistic feel. This realism is heightened as live action is occasionally dropped in. The characters themselves are beautifully designed and animated. Wall-E looks exactly as you’d expect a trash compacting robot to look and has some lovely little details on him. He even has little scratches which look great. EVE looks much more futuristic than Wall-E but has a beautiful design. The man behind the design of the iPad, iPod and iPhone was consulted on her design and she looks as sleek and stylish as Apple’s products (though her battery lasts longer).

As neither Wall-E nor EVE really speaks much, the animators had to make sure they were able to give their characters expression through the use of body language. They well and truly succeeded with this task and both characters have great expression. Both characters use their eyes and the position of their bodies is very important. At no time was I in any doubt as to what the emotion was that a character was trying to convey and their personalities shone through, despite their lack of dialogue. I read that Wall-E was modelled partly on Buster Keaton who despite his stoic and expressionless face could convey great emotion in the silent era. You can see a lot of Keaton (one of my all time favourite film makers) in Wall-E.

The story has two main strands. The first is a sweet and timeless love story which is very charming. The second part of the story turns the camera on the audience and looks at the lifestyle of the West in the early part of the 21^st century. It shows us a glimpse as to where we could be heading. There is only one giant corporation and people have become completely reliant on technology. They have also become so fat and lazy that they can no longer walk. The idea that we don’t appreciate what is around us is also hinted at. These themes fall into line with a lot of the messages from modern day ‘family films’ and can be considered a warning to us all. As well as the traditional Hollywood ‘left wing message’, there are also quite a lot of subtle Biblical messages in the film. EVE could be considered as a partner for the lonely Wall-E (Adam) and her guiding of the Axiom towards Earth has some parallels with the end of the Noah myth, I mean ‘story’. The corporation ‘BnL’ could also be seen as a sort of false prophet.

The whole film is incredibly sweet. It is lovely that all Wall-E wants from EVE is to hold her hand and it is touching to watch him attempt to do so. It almost bought a tear to my eye the first time I watched as Wall-E protected EVE from a storm while on Earth and the scene in which the two dance in space is one of the most magical I’ve seen. As well as being a lovely part of the story, it is also the best animated part and at times one of the funniest.

Wall-E is not the funniest of Pixar’s films but still has its funny moments. The character of a robot that follows Wall-E around, cleaning his track marks is very funny and with all Pixar films there are funny lines and incidents dotted throughout. The addition of the broken robots also created some laughs. It might not be Pixar’s funniest but I think that, with the possible exception of Toy Story 3 it is their most emotional and most endearing film to date. Your heart aches when Wall-E thinks he has lost EVE and again when the opposite is believed to be the case. It is testament to the strength of those two character’s love for one another that the fate of humanity plays second fiddle to their story. Wall-E is an absolutely fantastic film which is too good to be just considered as a children’s film. I believe that an adult would get more out of it than a child. It is touching, funny and sweet. And I love it.

10/10

The Immigrant

Charlie Chaplin’s 1917 short film The Immigrant features Chaplin’s Tramp character aboard a ship to America and later penniless on a New York street before a final set piece in a restaurant. Along the way he meets Edna Purviance, also an immigrant, and the two strike up a relationship.

The film’s most enduring scene features The Tramp and other immigrants being herded like animals and cordoned off as they arrive in America. During this scene, Chaplin kicks an immigration officer, something which was later held against him when he was accused of Communism and anti-American sentiment during the McCarthy era.

The immigrants corralled by the authorities in an overtly political scene

Although only twenty minutes long, the film features some tremendous sight gags and stage direction and Chaplin’s Tramp is a fully formed character by this point in his career. The makeup is also fantastic. I am a big fan of the white face/dark eye makeup of early cinema. Another area where the film is superb is in its direction and cinematography. Despite being fairly new to moving pictures, Chaplin’s mastery of the camera is clear to see. This is especially so in a scene in set aboard the boat featuring the whole cast eating soup in which Chaplin slides across a slippery floor as the ship rocks from side to side. Suspense is built towards the end of the film when The Tramp after seeing a man beaten for being 10c short on his bill, realises he has lost his money. His attempts to find money and or escape while under the watchful eye of a burly waiter are comic genius.

On the downside some of the scenes on the ship are a bit stale. These were actually filmed later than the final scenes as the film was written and performed as and when Chaplin came up with the ideas. The card game was boring but it did allow Chaplin to give Purviance’s character his winnings, thus introducing himself to her. I unfortunately watched a 1946 print of the film which contained some very annoying sound effects associated with the era. By the 40s with silent films long out of fashion, many earlier silent films had annoying sound effects added to them to give them a more up to date feel. This almost ruined the film for me. Most of the effects appear to have been produced using kazoos and slide whistles and are unnecessary and irritating. I also have a feeling that the film was lacking its original score. It’s a good idea to try and source early films without added sound effects and with their original musical accompaniment.

For Chaplin fans, this film is a must watch, however if you only have a passing interest in him or the films of the era then perhaps you’d be better off searching out the kick scene on YouTube.The film can be watched for free on YouTube here.

7/10

Beginners

Beginners is a wonderfully sweet and sad film from writer/director Mike Mills who is perhaps better known as a Graphic Designer and Music Video Director. His past comes across in a very pleasing way in Beginners, a film which doesn’t shy away from unusual ‘arty’ cinematography and surprising pop up images. The film follows the lives of Oliver (Ewan McGregor) and his father Hal (Christopher Plummer) mostly towards the end of Hal’s life and shortly after his death. After the death of his wife, Hal comes out as being gay at the age of 75 and wants to experience a lifetimes worth of homosexual activities in the short time he has left. Oliver is mostly supportive of his father but feels distanced from him as a result of their lack of time together in the past. There is also an undercurrent of animosity towards his father as a result of seeing his mother’s unhappiness throughout their marriage.

For the entirety of the film I either had a huge smile or sad look on my face. The film is full of emotion at both ends of the spectrum. There are some incredibly light and happy moments which often come with the interaction of Oliver and his dog or Oliver and a woman he meets, Anna (Melanie Laurent). Their love affair is filled with the same diametrically opposed emotion as the film itself. As is so often the case, this film features more laughs than most out and out comedies. There is subtle humour woven throughout and it boils over into full on laugh out loud moments on a number of occasions.

All three principle actors are superb. Melanie Laurent, in her first English language role is both frothy and seductive but has a deep lying cheerless existence while her accent is very appealing. Ewan McGregor is equally as good playing a depressed graphic artist. His American accent is also much better than his English accent! He shows emotional depth which I haven’t seen from him before. While the two aforementioned actors are both excellent, it has been Christopher Plummer who has drawn the most critical acclaim, winning both the BAFTA and Oscar awards for Best Supporting Actor. His performance is sublime. He manages to convey his excitement for his new life as well as the sadness that his life is coming to an end when it is only just beginning.

The film is full of hopeful optimism as well as gloomy sadness and is directed and acted wonderfully throughout. I thoroughly recommend it.

8/10

No Strings Attached

This is yet another sex friends romantic comedy, a genre that has become far too popular in the last couple of years. Emma (Natalie Portman) and Adam (Ashton Kutcher) keep bumping into one another over a period of fifteen years and eventually have sex. Emma is afraid of relationships and commitment etc so they decide to forgo any relationship and just have no strings attached sex. Predictably things don’t stay sweet for long and when Adam wants more from their relationship, Emma decided to break it off only to realise that she really does love him after all. Maybe I should have started this paragraph with ‘Spoiler Alert’ but anyone with an IQ higher than that of a Satsuma could guess how things are going to go.

After winning her Oscar for Black Swan it would appear that Portman is taking time off from acting by appearing in both this and Your Highness in the same year. I hope her sabbatical ends soon because she is wasted in these roles. Ashton Kutcher plays the Ashton Kutcher character, something he plays well but he is an annoying screen presence who sucks the life out of any movie he appears in. Some of the supporting cast are ok but there are far too many of them so no one character gets more than a few lines of dialogue. The character of Adam’s father, which was quite a large role, served no purpose and the father and son back story went nowhere.

Kutcher proving he can bench press 90lbs

The story is so unbelievably dull and predictable that my girlfriend (who made me watch the film) suggested turning it off half way though. I think it is trying to be clever by using the female character as the one who is afraid of commitment but this is hardly a new idea and the sex-friends angle has been done numerous times recently in films such as Love & Other Drugs (review here) and Friends with Benefits both of which are far sweeter and funnier.

The film did have one or two good lines and I laughed once and chucked a couple of times but it falls well short of the Kermode five-laughs-or-more-makes-a-comedy rule which I Adhere to. I also felt no compassion for Portman’s character who we are meant to feel sorry for when she realises she has made a mistake. It’s her own stupid fault.

This film should be avoided at all costs. If you really want to see a fuck buddies comedy then try one of the films mentioned above instead.

3/10

My Super-Ex Girlfriend

Starring Uma Thurman as an emotionally unstable Superheroine, 2006’s My Super-Ex Girlfriend was a pleasant surprise for me. Being let down so often by dull, unfunny romantic comedies, I found it to be a refreshing take on a tired formula.

The likable and affable Luke Wilson stars as the likable and affable Matt Saunders who meets a shy and seemingly uninterested Jenny Johnson, played by Uma Thurman on the Subway. When a man steals Johnson’s handbag, Matt pursues the thief and retrieves the bag. This act of heroism earns Matt a date. Several dates later, by which time Johnson has become increasingly neurotic and unbalanced, she lets Matt into her huge secret, that she is in fact G-Girl, a crime fighting Super Hero. When Johnson/G-Girl’s increasingly aggressive and jealous behaviour gets too much for Matt he decides to break off the relationship, a decision he could come to regret.

The film, while not incredibly funny is very enjoyable. I was watching with a smile on my face. Uma Thurman looks like she is really enjoying playing both characters and Luke Wilson is fine, though he is just playing Luke Wilson. A lot of the humour comes from Thurman’s wonderful portrayal of an emotionally unstable woman who becomes increasingly mentally unbalanced throughout the film. She is a joy to watch. Thurman and Wilson are joined by a strong cast which includes Anna Faris as Wilson’s co-worker and the fantastic Rainn Wilson (of The Office fame) as Matt’s best friend. Also joining the cast is English comedian Eddie Izzard who does a fairly convincing American accent but is not as convincing as a super villain.

Being both a Rom-Com and Superhero movie, there was only one place that the film could best set and that is in New York. The city looks fabulous but the CGI is sometimes shiny and unconvincing. A GCI shark looked about as real as a reality TV star’s face. I found it quite funny that G-Girl’s disguise is just a wig and glasses, but Superman gets by unnoticed with less.

While My Super Ex-Girlfriend is in no way a classic or even close to being great, it is a nice take on the romantic comedy genre with some funny moments and an excellent performance from Uma Thurman.

7/10

Hall Pass

Below are a picture of Nicky Whelan and a two minute clip of Stephen Merchant. Look at these and save yourself the 109 minutes it would take to watch Hall Pass.

The film stars Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis as married best friends who are entering middle age. Though happily married, they both fondly remember their time as single men where they were free to do whatever they wanted to whoever they wanted. After a series of forgettable mishaps and arguments, both of their wives, played by Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate, agree to give them a ‘Hall Pass’ or week off from marriage. The next ninety minutes of your life are spent watching what they get up to.

I decided to watch this film because I’d seen Stephen Merchant in the trailer and thought he seemed funny in the film. I’m a fan of both his solo work and his writing with Ricky Gervais so thought I’d give it a go. Unfortunately, he is only on screen for about four minutes. While he is the funniest thing in these few fleeting moments, it is not nearly enough and the rest of the film is very thin on the ground with laughter. I found myself smile a couple of times and chuckle once.

The idea of a Hall Pass is interesting and occasionally the film skirts around the philosophy of relationships. I wish there had been more of this as these were often the best moments of the film. The rest of the film is spent watching a couple of forty-somethings eat food, lie on hotel beds and occasionally try to meet women. Their disastrous attempts are meant to be funny but just aren’t and when things do start to change for the better for Owen Wilson’s character, he is pursued by a beautiful college student (Alexandra Daddario) and gorgeous barista (Nicky Whelan) which just seemed a little unlikely given his failed attempts to attract a woman throughout the rest of the film. What Fischer and Applegate get up to is more interesting and I think the film would have benefitted from spending more time with them.   

One Film
No Laughs

Towards the end, the film comes to the incredible conclusion that actually both men and women like sex (who knew?) and that although relationships can be difficult at times, they need to be worked at and everyone lives happily ever after… Snore.

The acting is not terrible but there is nothing for the actors to do. Everyone seems to have one eye on their bank balance, plodding through until they can move on to something else.

3/10

Love and Other Drugs

Here, Jake Gyllenhaal plays Jamie; a pharmaceutical sales rep in a small mid-Western town who meets Maggie, a young Parkinson’s disease sufferer played by Anne Hathaway and embarks on a whirlwind romance.

Both Gyllenhaal and Hathaway give capable performances in the film. Gyllenhaal manages to be smarmy and cock-sure while being likeable and Hathaway is credible as a quirky but confident artist. It is their relationship on screen where the film’s strength lies. You believe that both the actors and their characters enjoy spending time with each other and they appear to riff off one another with ease. When things start to get emotional however, Hathaway outshines Gyllenhaal who appears wooden.

The film grows from a comedy to a more serious feature as it and Hathaway’s Parkinson’s progress and this I believe is a good thing. Often the better Romantic Comedies are the ones who aren’t afraid to leave the comedy behind for long periods of time. The film also drew some attention for its nudity and bold sex scenes. While both actor’s bottoms and Hathaway’s breasts are on screen several times, I believe that it and the sex are done in a tasteful way which is integral to the storyline. There is nothing gratuitous or objectifying in any of these scenes.

One problem with an otherwise admirable film is that Gyllenhaal’s character appears to be a bit of a screw up in the first act and is ridiculed by his family for being the only member not to be a doctor when it is obvious from the outset that he is a smart and determined man. Why he is not more successful is unclear and he soon becomes a top salesman thanks to his gift of the gab and the invention of Viagra which he has no trouble selling. 

As with most Hollywood Rom-Coms there are ups and down in the relationship and the film but with more ups in both respects. It is an above average Romantic comedy with some fine performances by its lead actors.

6/10

It's Kind of a Funny Story

Well, no, it really isn’t. It’s Kind of a Funny Story is based on the true story of a 16 year old New York teenager who seeks help for his suicidal feelings. He is checked into a mental hospital which he is forced to share with adults due to the teenage facility undergoing renovation. There he impacts on the lives of his fellow inmates and meets the girl of his dreams.

I have two main problems with the film. The first is the main characters name; Craig. While Craig is a fine name, it is the American pronunciation which I cannot stand. It appears the Americans are blind to the letter ‘I’ in the name and instead pronounce it Creg as in Gregg. I find this incredibly annoying so a film with a lead called Craig/Creg has to do a lot to impress me. One scene in which the entire hospital chants ‘Creg, Creg, Creg!’ is infuriating.

My second problem with the film is Craig/Creg’s reasons for being in the hospital in the first place. As far as I can tell he is depressed due to the pressures of being a teenager (getting good grades, impressing girls, being popular etc). While I empathise with this, most teenagers feel this way but he appears to have no reason to. He is worried he isn’t smart and has no talents when he goes to one of the top schools in New York City and is a talented artist and singer. He is in love with his best friend’s girlfriend and doesn’t think he will ever find love but during the course of the film, both the girl he is in love with and another girl throw themselves at him. I just find his reasons for depression to be a bit woolly.

Craig/Creg is played unspectacularly by newcomer Kier Gilchrist while Zach Galifianakis plays Bobby, a fellow patient at the hospital. Galifianakis is well cast and gives a solid performance as Bobby. He is able surprise the audience with his ability to go from stable to unstable and back again and keeps the audience on the edge of its seats as you don’t know when he might ‘lose it’ again. He also plays the role of mentor to Craig/Creg in a believable and loving way. Craig/Creg’s love interest is played by Emma Roberts who is convincing as a depressed and quirky teen. Her reasons for being in the hospital are never really explained.

While the film has some nice moments including a sing-a-long to Queen and David Bowie’s Under Pressure and the ending is typical Hollywood slush but nice the film falls down on its protagonists reasons for being there in the first place. I don’t want to sound as though depression is not an illness as it most definitely is but I just don’t buy into Craig/Creg’s reasons for his depression. 

3/10