Made of Honour

Now before I get accused of going to see a "chick flick", I should point out that I got pulled along to see this by my sister, who no amount of debate could I convince to see Iron Man instead. I had been half looking forward to it, because the trailers made it look like a romantic comedy but with a twist on the genre.

Trailer lie. Although it has its moments and had some genuine laugh out loud scenes, it is still highly formulaic and clichéd. It also has one fairly huge plot-hole.

In addition to this, Made of Honour is so twee that it is about as offensive to Scottish people as it is possible to get. Seriously, it makes "Loch Ness" starring Ted Danson look like a balanced documentary. I actually promised myself that if anyone said "Och aye the noo", then I was going to walk out. Unfortunately, no-one did.

OK, for anyone interested, here's the plothole. The two leads are best friends, and their friendship is based on complete and total honesty, so Tom would tell Hannah if clothes didn't suit her and she'd tell him if his taste in art was juvenile. Yet when she introduces her fiancé that she only met a month ago, he doesn't once try to point out that she barely knows the man or that he isn't compatible, such as when he shoots wild game in Scotland, because she hates blood sports.

Score: ??

OQ: Wouldn't you be more....comfortable in a...a...20?

WALL-E

Short newspaper like review: Brilliant. Absolutely stunning. A must see.

Plot from trailer: Humans, having made a mess of the Earth, leave en mass and leave behind an army of WALL-E robots to clean up the planet. But 700 years later they still haven't returned and only one robot is still functioning.

And from that a brilliant story about heroics, romance, robots, spaceships and corrupt corporations emerges.

It has some unusual elements for a Pixar movie. For a start, there's a real person in it! Fred Willard as the CEO of BnL, seen in video messages. A little surreal, but he's definitely the right choice in the role. Second, and as some have mentioned, the humans are badly defined. All the same size/shape, with very little to give them any character. But this is deliberate for two reasons; the robots are the real stars of the show, and they're brilliantly realised but more importantly the humans have no character because of the . Sorry, but you'll understand when you see it.

And thirdly, the ship's autopilot is played by an actual computer. It's not an actor, but in fact MacinTalk, a text to speech program that comes with Macintosh computers Very unusual, but very well done. There's a lot of Apple references in this movie. For those who know their sci-fi, they might be able to make guesses about AUTO.

In fact, the only big name star that I recognised was Sigourney Weaver as the ship's computer. The guy playing WALL-E (and most of the other robots) is better known as a sound designer than an actor. Not that you'll have much chance to listen for the first thirty minutes of the film, as it is nearly devoid of dialogue up until that point.

As you'd expect, the film is crammed with loads of visual references, inside jokes and gags. It's a joy to watch.

The opening short animation; Presto is genius. As Alasdair said: never has CGI come closer to Tex Avery...

Score: A++ It's not quite as good as Toy Story, but then....what is?

OQ: I didn't know we had a pool!

Meet Dave

Caught this at an advance preview, which sounds all glitzy and glamorous, but in reality still costs £6 admission, contains a complete lack of anything resembling a red carpet and has about as much chance of me rubbing shoulders with Kiera Knightly as shouting "Expecto Petronum!" would cause a bright light to explode from my wand. I've clearly carried this metaphor too far.......

Meet Dave is about...... You see I haven't thought this through. I've started trying to explain what the film's basic premise is, but I have no idea how to finish that sentence because it's so plainly bizarre. Bunch of tiny space people travel to Earth in a starship that looks human. Eddie Murphy plays the captain of the ship and the ship itself, Dave.

If I were a harsh man, I would review Meet Dave using the following sentence: Eddie Murphy, a man never afraid to work himself stupid playing several parts in a movie, reaches for new levels of insanity to play both the captain and the starship he commands.

One does get the vague impression that this is a film designed to promote a single joke. After years of seeing Murphy play as many characters as possible, as in the Norbit trailer "Eddie Murphy, Eddie Murphy and Eddie Murphy stars in Norbit!", Meet Dave is a chance to see Eddie Murphy in Eddie Murphy.

Most of the reviews online have started with phrases like "Mildly redeeming", "Another safe movie from Murphy" and "Better then Norbit", which in my eyes wouldn't be difficult. Norbit was, in every sense of the word, painfully unfunny to watch.

The concept is a pretty good one, but I left with the impression that the film had taken the safe route with every possibly joke about a bunch of tiny people living inside a person. Whereas Norbit was filmed well (apparently) but then butchered in the editing room, Meet Dave just feels like the script could have done with one more last minute polish.

Elizabeth Banks and Gabrielle Union star as the love interests of both big Dave and little Dave, which is phrase that sounds far dodgier than it did in my head.

Overall, the film panders too much to it's core audience, which I can only imagine are tweenie* kids. Any younger and the jokes would miss the target, any older and...well the jokes would miss the target. And that's a pretty narrow age bracket to aim a film at.

Sadly the whole set-up is almost completely let down by the acting of Ed Helms as "Number Two". While everyone else is very much playing it straight, Ed is hamming it up like his life ambition is to win a Razzie**.

Score: D+
Definitely one for the kids. Woody Allen's "Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About Sex" already did every joke imaginable about tiny people living inside a person, and did it better.

OQ: I am Dave Ming-Cheng!

Plus points: Only one advert, but the usual number of trailers. Very much appreciated.

*As in "tweenager" - kids in the 11-14 age group. Not quite teenager. It's not a phrase I invented and I'm taking no responsibility for it.

**Exactly the opposite of an Oscar. The sort of award no actor wants to win. Categories include: Worst Actor, Worst Supporting Actor and Worst Excuse for a Horror Movie.

Wanted

It's been said that part of the appeal of shows like The Tomorrow People is that it connects with its audience at a personal level. In the case of The Tomorrow People, a group of teenagers develop fantastical powers of teleportation, telepathy and mental prowess. This "break-out" was always preceded by wild mood swings, hearing voices in their heads and a certain disconnection with the rest of the world.

As their primary audience was teenagers, this connected because those kids going through puberty would be experiencing very similar conditions. It made the audience feel like part of the show.

James McAvoy attempts something similar in Wanted. He's a bored office worker, stuck in a cubicle with a boss he hates and a job that doesn't matter to him. He life is crap and he knows it. This method is used to illicit sympathy and a sense of familiarity with his situation. As a way of drawing the audience in, it works remarkably well...up to a point. And that point is when the film totally jumps the shark. While passing through a burning ring. Using the Devil's own motorbike. Backwards.

You know that part in From Dusk Till Dawn, where the film jumped genres? Well imagine that, but imagine it jumping into a genre that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. Like turning into a sci-fi movie. Or a badly dubbed Japanese martial arts movie. That's pretty much how far Wanted jumps.

Look, if the fact that the guild of assassins are taking orders from fate, via the medium of binary code in the form of missed stitches from a giant weaving loom is the most sensible part of your plot, then you know you're in trouble as a scriptwriter. Unless your name is M Night. Shamalan, of course.

Strangely, if you can ignore this problem, the film is enormous fun to watch. It had the audience laughing, it's got some great, insane stunts and some good one-liners. And, as Gavin has already pointed out, it's almost worth the admission price for seeing Angelina's arse. Seriously, if Michelangelo had decided to make a Davina instead of his David, I'm pretty sure it would be something close to hers.

It was nice to see Hustle's Marc Warren in a big film. He really does well in this. But James McAvoy really has come into his own. You wouldn't think he isn't American based on this movie.

Trivia: There's a Ukrainian law that forbids cinemas to show films in Russian. As a result, many Ukrainians travelled to Russia to view the movie in Russian. During the chase sequence in which Wesley drives the Mustang and Fox drives the C4 Corvette, a camera shot briefly shows Fox's hand down shifting from above. However, it shows the shift lever from the Dodge Viper used earlier in the movie.

Score: Difficult to rate this one. It's definitely a bad film in terms of sensible plot. In fact if you actually try to think the whole thing through, you'll wind up with a headache. On the other hand it's a very good no-brainer action movie with comedy in parts.

Action: B+
Comedy: C+
Sensibility: F--

OQ: This is me taking control of my life...

Hancock

Another film I saw a couple of weeks back but haven't had time to review until now.

I know that most reviews, and indeed most people I talked to about it have said that Hancock is a movie in two parts. An excellent super-hero first part let down by a mediocre second part. And to be honest, it's beginning to worry me. Not that I can't see what they're talking about, but because I never picked up on this until they mentioned it. It's making me worry that my mind is losing its attentive powers.

The first half is very good. Great super-hero stuff with a brilliant twist; he's drunk. It's almost an antithesis to Wanted. Less focus on the action, more on the story. In fact, while the tagline of Wanted is "Kill one, save a thousand", Hancock's motto while drunk could well be "Save one, kill a train." He clearly wants to help, otherwise he wouldn't even turn up. But more often than not a drunk superhero is worse than no superhero at all. The highway chase scene from the trailer is a scene of carnage after he shows up.

Personally I found the change to the second half a bit shocking, but in a good way. I didn't see it coming, and in fact I'm not going to spoil it for you. It's one of those you need to see for yourself, like finding out who Luke Skywalker's pappy was. It adds an interesting dynamic to the story and really forces you to chose between the viewpoints of two characters.

I honestly liked the ending. Hancock having to turn his back on one world to save the only person who will ever understand him. A bit sappy in places but fun nevertheless.

Score: B+

OQ: Call me that....one more time.