Hello dear reader. Just like your local supermarket offering sacks of charcoal on a buy one get one free, or “BOGOF” as it’s known across the land in student union bars, it’s time for me to offer you a two for the price of one, never to be repeated (at least this week) offer for film reviews. No need to collect tokens or send off for something that could take up to twenty eight days for delivery, no, no, no. This ladies and gentlemen is my summer sale. So sit back, relax and enjoy the following appraisal, safe in the knowledge that its interest free, no deposit required and certainly no credit check paperwork to fill in either.
So with no further ado please make sure your seats are in the full and upright position and your tray tables are stowed.
Let me begin….
Recently I had a spare evening with nothing to do and I thought to myself, why not pop off to the local multiplex and see a film. My choice for my evening’s entertainment turned out to be Now You See Me. I’ll keep this brief but I think I can say without too much fear of contradiction that the film and the actors in it are very unlikely to be in contention for any Oscars next year.
Its plot centres around four street magicians who are going know where in their respective fields of illusion. Jessie Eisenberg plays J Daniel Atlas, the man with the generic magic wand. Woody Harrelson is Merrit McKinney, the cold reading specialist. Isla Fisher plays Henley Reeves, the Escapologist and rounding out the group we have Dave Franco (James Franco’s younger brother) who is trying to stay one step ahead of the police as a sleight of hand confidence trickster. These four are brought together by a mystery man in order to pull off the greatest set of magic tricks the world has ever seen.
The film basically follows this rag tag group, who are now known as the “The Four Horsemen”, through these tricks and in the process they take Michael Caine’s Arthur Tressler, for a very large nine figure sum of money. These tricks bring them to the attention of the FBI and Mark Ruffalo’s Dylan Rhodes. Ruffalo seems to spend most of the film trying to suppress his anger and I kept thinking that any second now he’s going to turn green, rip his shirt and start saying Hulk smash. Alas, this doesn’t happen but it would have improved the story a great deal if it had.
The whole film just feels totally formulaic and is at times perilously close to film making by numbers. There’s not much in the way of character development and even the inclusion of the usually good Morgan Freeman just seems like it was tacked on. The director, Louis Leterrier, seems to have put most of his time and effort into trying to visually distract you from the fact that once you take away the smoke and mirrors and it’s just a bit flat and empty.
Oh and before I forget this film does have a twist at the end but if like me you find yourself watching the film and your mind starts to wonder, you’ll figure it out. It also looks like this has been left so there could be a sequel. Should this happen I can only hope that they entrust the screenwriting duties to someone who knows what they’re doing I would recommend that they also trot off and go and ask for some input from the likes of Penn & Teller or even Derren Brown on how to keep an audience on the edge of their seats.
Now You See Me had the potential to be a great film but I did come away thinking that it’s less than the sum of its parts, which isn’t easy to do given the acting talent on display. If you want to see Hollywood doing magic well then I would suggest watching Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige. The story is far more compelling and it had more than one twist up its sleeve that will keep you entertained.
Now on to the second part of my cinema deposition, The Worlds End.
Dictionary.com’s definition of Surprise:
Surprise
[ser-prahyz, suh-] verb, sur•prised, sur•pris•ing, noun
verb (used with object)
To strike or occur to with a sudden feeling of wonder or astonishment, as through unexpectedness:Her beauty surprised me.
My definition of surprise:
Watching The Worlds End
For those of you not in the know this is the third and apparently final part in what is now being called The Cornetto Trilogy. The first two parts being Shaun of the Dead and Hot fuzz respectively. The reason it’s called this is simple. All three films have the ice cream treat in them in some form or another. Personally I think they could have also gone with The Leap Frog Fence Trilogy but you’d probably get more of those studio types happier with product placement with the former and they do say that money talks so I’ll let them keep their title.
When Simon Pegg and Nick Frost first graced our screens together it was in the Edgar Wright directed TV series Spaced. It only lasted fourteen episodes but you could tell even back then that the three of them together were a seamless match for each other. Then came Shaun and Hot Fuzz which cemented them as the big boys on the block when it came to home grown humour.
When it comes to The Worlds End the gang are all back in fine form. Simon Pegg plays Gary King, an anti-hero at the wrong end of his thirties with not much to show for it. He decides that in order to get his life back on track he must complete an epic pub crawl that he and four of this friends failed to complete back in their teens. This pub crawl consists of twelve pints in twelve pubs in their home town, culminating with the final pint being downed in The Worlds End.
As the gang try to reconcile the past and deal with the present they realise that all is not right with the current population and reaching the final watering hole is the least of their worries.
The reason I am surprised by the film is I went into it expecting it to be very good and for the most part it is. I think my problem with it is that the part Simon Pegg plays is so universally unlikable that at times he is hard to watch. I swung back and forth from revulsion towards King to genuinely feeling sorry for him. The rest of the ensemble cast which includes Martin Freeman, Paddy Considine, Rosamund Pike and Eddie Marsan play their parts perfectly as the long suffering friends of Gary. The other little gem in this film, that I far as I can tell, hasn’t been made common knowledge, is a really first class cameo from a former James Bond. It has some great set pieces and some of the dialogue, especially towards the end, is nothing short of brilliant.
Without giving too much of the game away the baddies in this film are The Network and in order to save the day the main protagonists must rid their home town of Newton Haven of these dastardly wrong doers. This does not come without its consequences but if you like the idea of a film where Nick Frost kicks some serious but, drinking is a necessity and the C-Bomb gets dropped in the same sentence as the word Legoland then this is a definite must for multiplex viewing. It also happens to have one of the best soundtracks I’ve heard in a very long time. Blur, The Soup Dragons and The Sisters of Mercy to name a few really help move this film along and all of the music used could be considered a co-star in its own right. The best way I can sum this film up to say it’s the modern day equivalent of Withnail & I Robot.
Go and see this film as it could very well be the last time that Pegg, Frost and Wright make a comedy together. I suspect at some point in the not too distant future a studio will come along with a blank cheque or two and ask them if they’d be interested in making something together again but annoyingly I suspect all three of them are men of integrity.
Now You See Me
Twitter Review:
Hocus pocus with a touch of misdirection and twist so obvious that a rabbit in a hat could see it coming.
#IsThisYourCard?
Useful Links:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1670345/?ref_=sr_1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KzJNYYkkhzc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_diRgwPCS8
The Worlds End
Twitter Review:
Pegg. Frost & Wright, saving the world one pint at a time. No designated driver & a universal hangover.....
#LetsBooBoo
Useful Links:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1213663/?ref_=sr_2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFo7eJR2cvc
